Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1897-06-11
THE SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
peFAclNo THE LANDSCAPE.


large railway corporations publish an
nually pamphlets made attractive by
cut and description, setting forth her
rural charms, illustrating the beauty of
her scenery and the pleasure of summer
life among her hills and mountains and in
the cool, sequestered wales through which
How her brooks and larger streams. The
state itself, at considerable expense,
prints and circulates glowing advertise
meut of the lnducement she offers the
residents of the cities and the warmer
regions to the South to come out from
among their heated walls, or from under
Ornament that melts with fervent heat,
and bv a summer residence among the
green hills recupcrate exhausted energy
and take i'm added store for future drafts.
The governor publishes annually an
Nrbor day proclamation, urging the
people to plant trees and by other means
contribute to the Identifying of the
state.
All this is very proper, but its force
is somewhat dulled when the tourist
looks from the car window out upon the
ashes and blackeued trunks of a "slash
ing" along the railways track, the
work of the railways own employees,
devastation that is warranted neither by
circumstances nor demanded by traffic
requirements. The states efforts to be-
guile the deni1ens of the heated city to
take UP their residence for the summer
within its borders. and its temptations in
he shape of delightful drives along
shaded roads are not sustained by the
wretched character of the highways in
general or the lawlessness or excessive
thrift of the owners of lands abutting
on these highways. Rough or imperfect
Y made roads the material for which
$ the turf of the waysde or the scrap
ngs from the gutter, often thickly
scattered with stones, spoil the pleasure
of Il carriage drive. Here by the road
Idle is spot, rough and ledgy, whose
unsightliness nature has struggled for
half a century to conceal with bush and
shrub, and a stunted growth of elm or
birch or maple and by their gnarled and
twisted trunks and limbs she has trans
formed it into a picturesque feature of
the landscape. Its outlines delight the
eye ard its shade is grateful to man and
beast 'Ih; thing today is, but tomor-
row the traveller passing that way finds
no its place beggarly pile of knotty,
crooked faggots. Brush strews the
locks, the ugly outlines of the spot are
All revealed and one of the attractions of
q drive along country highway IS
withdrawn and hideousness reigns in
its place. Fire is apt to complete the
work of destruction, the mould which
decades of decayng vegetation had la
bOriously deposited there and which
might in time nourish new growth is
burned away, the place vii! be desert
forevermore, and all for a little miserable
stove wood that ought to sour the DIS
position 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 attractive to straug-
ers, and to resident Nermonters them
selves. 1t is proper matter for Arbor
day eXhOrtations by the executive and
other preachers. 1t is as desirable to
preserve what trees are already planted
by the roadside as to plant new trees
tor some future vandal to hew down,
Another proper subject for practical
ArbOr day work is the determination of
the caterpillars that make their nests in
the wayside greeuery and extend their
ravages to the neighboring fruit trees.
a ride along the highways of Vermont
in May and early June. in many local.
ties, is passing amid dead forms of ma.
ture wrapped in their winding sheets
From stump to tOpmost branch trees are
shrouded in the spectral waving of the
loathsome insects that infest them, and
she blossoms and tender verdure have
persisted. The admonitons of his ex
celency, or the commands of the law
ought to be directed toward the exter
animation of these hdeous defaeers OF
the landscape 1t should be Arbor day
every day in the week till these pest.
are destroyed. 1t is better TO preserv,
from destruction a tree that is grown
than to plant new victims for the un
conquered marauders. Every land
owner should study and put into exc
cution the best means of Kidding his owl
premises, and the sides of the highway
along his possessions, of the disgusting
Invaders There is no nonsense abou
this sort of Arbor day work. 1t is in
tensely practical and one of the mos
important that can be urged upon Yer