Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 245, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1910 — PEST KILLING JERSEY TREES [ARTICLE]

PEST KILLING JERSEY TREES

State Authorities Must Act Quick to Save Elms and Chestnuts, Bays Forester. Trenton, N. J.—Alfred E. Gaskill, state forester, said the other day that the chestnut trees in New Jersey are suffering from a fatal disease, due to Infection by tße elm leaf beetle and, while he admits nothing can be done with the malady, he says all efforts possible should be made to rid the state of the insect. He predicts New Jersey will be treeless unless the state and municipal authorities and the residents in general combine by next spring in an extraordinary effort to drive out the elm leaf beetle. The forester added: "This is the last time for the people of New Jersey who want their elms to stand to get at the work of saving them. I mean Just what I say. The last call is out, for unless something Is done next May and in the first two weeks of June it will be too late to stop the elm' leaf beetle from finishing his work. I have Just returned from a long trip, in which time I went into this question very carefully. Where the trees have been intelligently sprayed, the beetle has been destroyed. It is possible to destroy this pest, but the people must get at it. “I do not believe this is the work entirely of the individual, but of the municipality. It would cost very little for the municipality to do it, and it is all Important now. The time to act has arrived. The warning was sent out from Connecticut and Massachusetts, but nothing has been done ex-

cepting in a few municipalities. In Newark and Orange, the shade tree commissions have done much good work, but elsewhere in the northern part of the state the elm, our best shade tree, has been doomed. “Regarding the chestnuts, the fatal disease in them Is fast causing them to disappear. The work must be done next spring, or it will be too late.”