Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-06-07
DEFA cling TIE LANDSCAPE.

lish annually pamphlets made at
tractive by cut and description,
setting forth her rural charms, illus
trating the beauty of her scenery and
the pleasure of summer life among
her hills and mountains and in the
cool, sequestered wales through
which flow her brooks and larger
streams. The State itself, at con-
siderable expense, prints and circu-
lates glowing advertisement of the
inducement she offers to the residents
of the cities and the warmer regions
to the South to come out from among
their heated walls, or from under
armament that melt with fervent
heat and by a summer residence
among the Green Hills recuperate
exhausted energy and take In added
store for future drafts. The Govern
or publishes annually an Arbor Day
proclamation, urging the people to
plant trees and by other means con-
tribute to the identifying of the
State.
All this is very proper, but it's force
is somewhat dulled when the tourist
looks from the car window OFT upon
the ashes and blackened trunks of a
"slashing' along the railways track,
the work of the railways own en-
ployes, a devastation that is warrant
ed neither by circumstances nor de-
manded by traffic requirements. The
States efforts to beguile the denizens
of the heated city to take up their
residence for the summer within its
borders, and it's temptations in the
shape of delightful drives along
shaded roads are not sustained by the
wretched character of the highways
in general or the Iawlessness or ex-
cessive thrift of the owners of lands
AUDITING on these highways. Rough
or imperfectly made roads, the ma
terial for which is the turf of the way
side or the scrapings from the gutter,
often thickly scattered with stones,
spoil the pleasures of a carriage
drive. Here by the roadside is spot,
rough and ledgy, whose unsightliness
nature has struggled for half CEN
fury to conceal with bush and shrub,
and stunted growth of elm or birch
or maple, and by their gnarled and
twisted trunks and limbs she has
transformed it into a picturesque
feature of the landscape. It's out
lines delight the eye and its shade is
grateful to man and beast. This
thing today is, but tomorrow the
traveller passing that way finds in its
place a beggarly pile of knotty,
crooked faggots. Brush strews the
are all revealed and one of the at
fractions of drive along a country
highway is withdrawn and hideous-
ness reigns in it's place. Fire is apt
to complete the work of destruction,
the mould which decades of decaying
vegetation had laboriously deposited
there and which might in time nour-
ish new growth, is burned away, the
place will be a desert forevermore,
and all for little miserable stove
ton of the most amiable housewife,
and which was not worth half the la
Dor of cutting. This thing, on a
larger or smaller scale, is happening
every year, on all the highways, all
over the State, and is one of several
other things that from year to year is
tending to make Vermont less at
tractive to strangers, and to resident
Vermonters themselves. 1t is
proper matter for Arbor Day exhor-
tations by the Executive and other
preachers. It is as desirable to pre-
serve what trees are already planted
by the roadside as to plant new trees
for some future vandal to hew down.
Another proper subject for practi-
cal Arbor Day work is the extermi-
nation of the caterpillars that make
their nests in the wayside greenery
and extend their ravages to the
neighboridg fruit trees. A ride along
the highways of Vermont in May and
early June, in many localities, is
passing amid dead forms of nature
wrapped in their winding sheets.
From stump to topmost branch trees
are shrouded in the spectral weaving
of the loathsome insects that infest
them, and the blossoms and tender
verdure have persisted. The admoni
tions of His Excellency, or the COM
mands of the law, ought to be direct
ed toward the determination of these
hideous defacers of the landscape.
1t should be Arbor Day every day in
the week till these pests are destroy
ed. It is better to preserve from de-