Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899: Volume LIV, No. 4, February 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, February 1899: Volume LIV, No. 4, February 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The conclusion from the foregoing facts is inevitable that one of the
great and pressing sanitary wants of New York city is an ample supply
of trees. It is, in effect, destitute of trees; for the unsightly
shrubs which are planted by citizens are, in no proper sense, adequate
to the purpose which we contemplate. Its long avenues, running north
and south, without a shade tree, and exposed to the full effect of the
sun, are all but impassable at noonday in the summer months. The
pedestrian who ventures out at such an hour finds no protection from
an umbrella, on account of the radiation of the intense heat from the
paved surface. Animals and man alike suffer from exposure in the
glowing heat. Nothing mitigates its intensity but the winds or an
occasional rainstorm. And when evening comes on, the cooling of the
atmosphere produced by vegetation does not occur, and unless partially
relieved by favoring winds or a shower the heat continues, but little
abated, and the atmosphere remains charged with noxious and
irrespirable gases. It is evident that shade trees, of proper kinds,
and suitably arranged, supply the conditions necessary to counteract
the evils of excessive heat. They protect the paved streets and the
buildings largely from the direct rays of the sun; they cool the lower
stratum of air by evaporation from their immense surfaces of leaves;
they absorb at once the malarious emanations and gases of
decomposition, and abstract their poisonous properties for their own
consumption; they withdraw from the air the carbonic acid thrown off
from the animal system as a poison, and decomposing it, appropriate
the element dangerous to man, and give back to the atmosphere the
element essential to his health and even life.[6]
And we may add that cultivated shade trees in New York would be an
artistic and attractive feature of the streets. Every citizen enjoys
trees, as is evident from the efforts made to cultivate them
throughout the city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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