In no way can the good taste and public spirit of our citizens be better shown than in the planting of shade trees. Regarded simply from a commercial point of view one cannot make a more paying investment than setting out an oak, elm, maple or other shade tree about his premises. To a second generation it becomes a precious heirloom, and the planter is duly held in remembrance for those finer qualities of heart and head, and the wise forethought which prompted a deed simple and natural, but a deed too often undone. What an increased value does a fine avenue of shade trees give to real estate in a city? And in the country the single stately elm rising gracefully and benignantly over the wayside cottage, year after year like a guardian angel sending down its blessings of shade, moisture and coolness in times of drought, and shelter from the pitiless storm, recalls the tenderest associations of generation after generation that go from the old homestead. Occasionally the tree, or a number of them, sicken and die, or linger out a miserable existence, and we naturally after failing to ascribe the cause to bad soil, want of moisture or adverse atmospheric agencies, conclude that the tree is infested with insects, especially if the bark in certain places seems diseased. Often the disease is in streets lighted by gas, attributed to the leakage of the gas. Such a case has come up recently at Morristown, New Jersey. An elm was killed by the Elm borer (Compsidea tridentata), and the owner was on the point of suing the Gas Company for the loss of the tree from the supposed leakage of a gas pipe. While the matter was in dispute, a gentleman of that city took the pains to peel off a piece of the bark and found, as he wrote me, "great numbers of the larvae of this beetle in the bark and between the bark and the wood, while the latter is 'tattooed' with sinuous grooves in every direction and the tree is completely girdled by them in some places. There are three different sizes of the larvae, evidently one, two and three years old, or more properly six, eighteen and thirty months old." The tree had to be cut down.