OUR BEAUTIFUL FORESTS 115 
Trees get sick the same as people, and they show it, 
too. They change color, they look “spotty/’ they get a 
temperature. When a deer or a goat or rabbit nibbles 
the bark off a young tree, letting insects burrow inside 
the tender cambium, the tree gets wound fever; some¬ 
times trees with thin bark even sunburn as you do when 
you go without a hat in summer. Think how un¬ 
comfortable the city trees must be when the pavement 
is laid close around their trunks; the hard cement chokes 
off the water, it flattens and twists the roots. Every 
time I see such a tree I want to fetch a pick-axe and 
break away the cruel pavement. 
Trees have their troubles, and there are tree doctors 
to cure them. On my neighbor’s lawn stands a beauti¬ 
ful chestnut tree, insects attacked it and rotted it until 
the trunk was almost hollow and the tree was ready to 
die. Then tree doctors came and cleaned out that hole 
and filled it with cement as neat as any dentist fills a 
tooth; they saved its life, and my neighbor’s children 
can have their roasted chestnuts as before. 
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