felt: hurricane damage 
71 
protracted rains, is purely a physical problem. It depends upon the 
thickness of the top or the related wind resistance and the strength and 
extent of the root system. A dense top on a tall tree is a potential storm 
hazard, the taller the tree the greater the danger from wind storms. 
These was a case at Westport, Conn., in 1931 where several tall Carolina 
poplars with trunk diameters of about three feet were blown over where¬ 
as a nearby tree which had been headed back a few months before was 
practically undamaged and the nearby cottage escaped unharmed. 
Undoubtedly many such cases could be found in the storm swept area 
of last September. The extent to which heading back is justified de¬ 
pends much upon local conditions. This is one method of reducing the 
probability of hurricane damage. The effects of street curbs are shown 
on plates 7 and 8. 
The development of a more adequate root system is surely worthy of 
consideration. Neglect of this may be costly. A recently published 
item stated that $100,000 is needed to repair side walks broken by up¬ 
rooted trees in Queens County, N. Y. It is well known that deep 
rootage is impossible in a shallow soil, on rock and in a soil where the 
water table or a heavy clay or hardpan is near the surface. The obvious 
thing is to recognize these conditions and use low growing trees in such 
areas or head them back to offset to some extent the manifest root limi¬ 
tations. It is known that the roots of most trees reach out after plant 
food and even in areas where deep rootage is impossible, it is believed 
that judicious feeding may result in a material extension of the root 
system, thus giving the trees a firmer hold upon the soil. 
The inadequate root systems of many trees in parks and park-like 
areas may be corrected to a large extent by deep feeding, preferably by 
the bar hole method, since this is the more economical and certainly an 
efficient method of stimulating root growth and inducing a deeper pene¬ 
tration of roots in the soil. Recently our attention was brought to a 
series of “root casts” so to speak which had developed after the feeding 
of an elm some two years previously. The plant food in 15 inch bar 
holes had been so thoroughly invaded by tree roots that they occupied 
practically the entire space and since these holes were in heavy clay 
ordinarily not invaded by the roots to any extent, it is obvious that 
these “root casts” greatly increased the hold of the tree upon the earth. 
The same thing would result in lighter soils though the root concentra¬ 
tion might not be so evident. The important point is that deep feeding 
is favorable to the development of deeper roots and greatly increases the 
