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Of course, trees are liable to attacks by fungi and insects. In the United States 
costly and bulky appliances are in use for the purpose of fumigating and spraying big 
trees. I am not, however, in favour of spraying, as a rule. The best spraying appliances 
are the axe and mattock, together with a nice warm fire. The continued presence of 
parasites on a tree spells debility. The tree was sick to begin with, or it has met with 
accidents, or it is worn out, or in poor or ill-drained land, or is overcrowded. The 
obvious remedy is to seek the cause of the debility, which enables the parasite to get a 
hold. If that is not coped with, the parasite will pay more frequent visits until death 
results. Use spraying and fumigating methods simply as adjuncts to the treatment 
of the fundamental cause, which is dragging the sick tree down to become a prey to 
fungus and insect vermin. In the same way the physician uses lotions for skin 
diseases, only to palliate distressing symptoms. He properly says that to effect a cure 
we must get at the cause ; we must improve the general health, and so he inculcates a 
course of treatment that he looks upon as getting at the root of things. And that is 
just the policy of the wise tree-doctor. 
Smooth-barked trees are very liable to attack by wood-boring beetles. The 
stringybark trees of our forest are supplied by nature with a thick blanket which 
prevents beetles attacking them too easily. The smooth-barked plane is very vulner- 
able, and hence stake-ties for them are very dangerous things. 
They are also liable to attacks by a little curculio beetle, which riddles them. 
I have seen the trunks of planes girdled with a band of sticky fly-paper to intercept 
these little beetles. But, obviously, such a method is only capable of application 
in places where there is very . little dust. It certainly could not be applied in 
city streets. 
8. White Ants. Most people have observed an official tapping the wheels of 
railway carriages of express trains with light hammers, when such trains arrive at a 
station, and are proceeding to a further stage on their journey. This is a matter of 
precaution, as a flaw in a wheel might result in disaster. In like manner the staffs of 
our public parks are constontly inspecting the trees to see if a branch is too top-heavy, 
or has cracked, or whether a trunk is suffering from white-ant (a very common pest) or 
decay, or whether it is likely to heel over with the wind after soaking rain. Numbers 
of branches and not a few trees are annually removed simply because they are a possible 
source of danger. The writer has no intention of hearing the verdict of a coroner's 
jury, " The deceased was killed by a limb of a tree which fell upon him, and the 
dangerous condition of said limb should have been ascertained by the Director of the 
Botanic Gardens, whom we therefore find guilty of manslaughter." The public may 
be assured that special precautions are taken on th?ir behalf, and such precautions 
sometimes necessitate hard pruning and even removal of trees which appear, healthy 
to a superficial observer. Here let me icfer my readers to a very useful paper^ 
" Diseases of Shade and Ornamental Trees/' by B. T. Galloway and A. F. Woods, in 
the " Ye-'.r-book of Agriculture, U.S.A.," for 1896, pp. 237-254. 
