November, 1913 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
2 97 
Wounds made by lawnmowers, etc., at the base 
of a tree, as in the case of this beech, should be 
carefully attended to 
versy. Some observers 
claim it never hurts the 
bark or living tissue of 
the trunk, while others 
can prove that trees have 
been killed by it. Until 
it is determined under 
what conditions it is 
safe, the manufacturers 
warn against the applica¬ 
tion of carbolineum to 
the bark or to the sap- 
wood close to the bark. 
To large surfaces it can 
of course be applied 
without danger, and for 
such purposes it has 
great value, as it pene¬ 
trates very deep, espe¬ 
cially if it is heated. 
Creosote and carbo¬ 
lineum, both of which, 
by the way, are com- 
monlv carried by paint 
dealers and cost from sixty-five cents to a dollar or so a gallon, 
do not actually fill the wood in the sense that paints do, hut they 
make the wood impervious to water and immune from the attacks 
of insects. The reason why they cannot he considered as com¬ 
plete dressings is that they do not to any extent prevent the check¬ 
ing of the wood, even when they are frequentlv renewed. They 
cannot in any way fill or bridge over cracks. Checking continues, 
though slowly, for an indefinite period. Ultimately, the cracks get 
so large, if they are not covered over, that water gets into them 
and, freezing, tends to break out bits of the wood, thus exposing 
the unimpregnated inner regions. For this reason chemical pre¬ 
servatives, as distinguished from dressings which produce a me¬ 
chanical covering, have not proved successful permanent appli¬ 
cations for wounds. 
Of those materials which do actually fill and 
cover the wood, paint is probably the most used. 
Pure white lead and linseed paint makes a very 
good dressing for moderately small wounds, espe¬ 
cially if the wood is dry when the paint is applied. A cross . seclion showing a typi . 
as adults to 
the wound to emerge. 
At the surface the paint 
may stop them tem¬ 
porarily, but the strong 
jaws of the insects soon 
break it down. Each 
hole thus left, with a 
moist mass of sawdust 
extending back into the 
wood, is an ideal ger¬ 
minating bed for fun¬ 
gus spores. In four or 
five years more the 
wood is quite rotten, 
large cracks appear in 
its surface, ants and 
other insects have free 
access. Soon the wound 
is beyond any cure but 
a more or less expen¬ 
sive cavity treatment. 
Repeated observation 
of this process has led 
the writer to conclude that a single coat of paint is a positively 
dangerous dressing for large wounds, concealing, as it does, the 
This tree has made repeated efforts to cover its 
wound with calluses, but the bark has been 
gnawed off by horses 
Its effectiveness is much increased if a second ap¬ 
plication is made after the first 
checking has taken place. Paint 
seems especially suitable for ordin¬ 
ary orchard practice, where the 
wounds are not large nor inaccess¬ 
ible and heaiing is fairly rapid. It 
would not do to ignore Professor 
Bailey’s judgment in such a matter. 
“My conclusion is,” he says, “after 
having had the question in mind for 
a decade, that a heavy application 
of lead paint is the best all- 
around dressing for common prun¬ 
ing wounds.” The tree repairer, 
however, has often to deal with quite 
different affairs from ordinary prun¬ 
ing wounds. Suppose a large wound 
is painted. In a year or two season 
checks form in the wood and the in¬ 
elastic paint fractures. Boring in¬ 
sects find little crevices in which to 
cal frost crack 
deposit their eggs. The larvae bur¬ 
row back and forth in the wood, 
The frost crack shows as a long, narrow opening lengthwise of the 
trunk, in time developing pronounced lips 
disintegration which goes on underneath it almost as rapidly as 
if the wound had not been dressed at all. 
A very permanent dressing is the plastic cement used by 
slaters. It is applied in a thick layer with a spatula. It does not 
become hard nor crack if it is properly made. It has no anti¬ 
septic quality and must be preceded by an application of carbo¬ 
lineum. It is probable that the use of slaters’ cement will become 
more common as the method of making two applications, one for 
sterilization and one for protection, is more widely adopted. 
Grafting wax is too expensive and adheres too imperfectly to 
entitle it to a place as a regular dressing, but the liquid form 
has important special uses. It is the best thing to 
apply to fresh wounds, because it does not in the 
least injure the cambium. The wax can be made 
at home according to the recipes to be found in 
Bailey’s “Horticultural Rule-book,” or it can be 
bought, costing about forty cents a pound. To 
make liquid wax of the ordinary kind, heat it and 
mix about half its weight of alcohol 
with it. It may be well to give 
Bailev's recipe for “Lefort’s liquid 
grafting wax.” “Best white resin, 
one pound; beef tallow, one ounce; 
remove from the fire and add eight 
ounces of alcohol. Keep in closed 
bottles or cans.” 
Next to paint, tar has been the 
material most commonly used as a 
dressing for wounds. There are 
several different kinds of tar. To 
dispose first of the undesirable ones, 
the material known as “coal tar 
paint" is merely a solution of some 
kind of asphaltum in benzine and 
has no value as a wound dressing. 
It does not spread thickly, dries 
brittle, and is rapidly dissolved by 
water. Pine tar, or pitch, is rather 
expensive, not very convenient to 
handle, and in no way superior to 
coal tar. A special warning should 
