About Trimming Trees

A correspondent gives tliese views lo the Daily Times: ín Saturday's Eveuinjj Times yon give space to a short editorial on the triinming of the trees ou the University campus. I thiuk that Mr. Taplin. who has the work in charge, will tind that he has made a grave mistake. Experience has taught me that forest trees will nat stand pruning. I was born and brought up on a farm, and a new farm at that, and I have a distinct remembrance of a bare-footed boy and an oíd ax whose principie work during July and August, was grubbing, or, in other words trimming the sprouts off from the live stumpg. All glrding was also done in these nionths. Every person is a ware that nature put the leaves on trees for other purposes than beauty and the convenieuce of shade for. the passer-by. Leaves are feeders that absorb certain gases which go far to nourish and keep the tree alive. If a tree is girdled tbe leaves die. If tbere are uo leaves there are uo feeders and the tree wlll die. llany of the trees on the campus have been shorn of nineteenths of their leaves. They are so mucli nearer death. Koots and rootbeds are also feeders. If they do not receive proper nurishment the tree cannot put forth leaves. Now the campus with its many walks and subteranian steam heat passages is not just au ideal place for trees to do well, as these walks, etc, have a tendeney to keep the ground dry and hard. The same can be said of the trees on our streets. The more stone, tar, or cement walks we have the more dead trees. Is not this so? I ask every thinking person if they ever went into a city of cement walks and pa ved streets if they found a good growth of shade trees along the street? The Times rightly says: "Our trees want nourishment, the dead leaves are unsightly and are gathered up and burned. The grass is eut every week and taken away. The fact is the soil is cropped to death. ïhe only nourishinent that is given it is water. Every farmer knows that to be successful we must give the soil a fertilizer of some kind for root nourishment for his crops. Every farmer knows that he cannot pasture land year after year without returning potash to the soil in some form. Now the grass on the campus is kept closer by the use of a lawn niower than any pasture is kept by the pating of the grass by cattle. Wliat the campus wants is manure. Now it is not to be expeeted thait it will be made the dump ground of various barn yards, whieh would make it a vile unsightly mess. Potash fertilizers can be bought very eheaply, they can offend no one. They will give tbe soil proijer nourishment and the tvees that are now untrimmed will live and prosper, but all the fertilizera in existence can not cause branches and leaves to grow on a telepraph pole. Do not cut off a man's hair to cure his corns.