18 
EASTERN SHADE TREE CONFERENCE 
On private lands, especially in woodlands, many trees are uprooted or 
badly broken and little work has been done to remove dead or badly 
damaged timber. 
As Felt, Bromley and others have already pointed out, this vast 
amount of dead or partially dead timber and that piled as cordwood or as 
dead stumps, will, unless disposed of at the right time, offer places for 
prolific breeding of various kinds of bark and wood borers such as the 
beetles that carry the Dutch elm disease. This will, no doubt, in 
Rhode Island as elsewhere, greatly increase the problem of preventing 
the introduction of the Dutch elm disease and, in lesser degree, of con¬ 
trolling of other insect borne diseases. Our State and Federal govern¬ 
ments are likely to feel increasing pressure in the future for greater 
economy in government expenditures and new activities, such as remov¬ 
ing insect-pest-breeding trees are liable to suffer from lack of funds. 
Those interested in trees, however, must call the matter to the attention 
of the proper authorities and urge joint public and private effort to 
reduce damage likely to result, for we will surely pay heavily later for 
any neglect which may be countenanced in the present crisis. 
Summing up the situation for Rhode Island, it seems to the writer 
that the hurricane has emphasized several lessons of value for the future 
in connection with shade tree programs and policies. First of all, it has 
tested the ability of many different kinds of trees to stand up under 
severe storm conditions and when exposed to salt laden winds along 
ocean shores. It has indicated considerable variations in wind resistance 
among individual trees of the same variety and points out the necessity 
for future study of this variation and the possibility of breeding by 
selection, and, perhaps by hybridization, of trees that possess in a 
superior degree qualities that are desirable in connection with different 
uses of trees and the sites they are to occupy and of propagating our 
shade trees, like our fruit trees, more largely by asexual methods. 
It has been evident also that many trees went down because they 
were planted over ledges or hard pans or that their roots were not 
extended in all directions or had been partly cut by excavations. It 
indicates the need for greater care in planting, blasting if necessary to 
loosen the soil and encourage the growth of a symmetrical root system, 
and also of alloting the tree the space needed for natural development. 
Much of the early planting, whether by individual property owners or 
by public agencies, was done without adequate planning for future 
growth so that now mature trees often have little room in which to 
