Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1881 — Sanitary Use of Trees. [ARTICLE]

Sanitary Use of Trees.

It is generally known that trees and shrubbery take the carlxmic acid thrown out in the breath of men and animals separate it into its component parts — carbon of oxygen —give back the latter to be used over again, and work up the former into wood and fruit. It is also coming to be generally understood that forest trees do important service in prompting rainfalls, aud in helping to retain the surface water for springs, streams and general use. It is also known that certain species, planted in malarial localities, help to render the latter healthy by somehow using up the deadly miasma. It would not appear that trees'growing near drains carry off the sewerngo water. A gentleman whose cess drain was constructed just like his neighbors’, and in the same kind of soil, lias found it unnecessary to clean it out, while the others had to be cleaned out frequ ntly. An examination showed that throe large trees, whose roots had penetrated into the vicinity of his second, or waste, cess-pool, were clearly the channels through which the waste all escajied. Whether it was changed into plant-food, as is likely, or was exhaled through the leaves, in either case it was disposed of with equal safety.