Friend of Trees

George Edward Stone, the best friend U.S. trees ever had, died last week, aged 80, in Amherst, Mass. His were the scientific discoveries which lie behind the modern craft of tree surgery. In a number of patent fights, when professional tree surgeons claimed exclusive rights to tricks of their trade, Stone proved that he had long before anticipated them.

When Stone was an undergraduate at Massachusetts Agricultural College, botanists were obsessed with taxonomy--classification of plants. But to Stone a tree was not a specimen but a dynamic organism influenced by a complex of environmental factors. In those days linesmen were stringing new telephone and power wires along U.S. streets, hacking mortal wounds in trees and often electrocuting them with leaky wires. New-laid gas pipes, too, were spreading out, poisoning roots along many a shady avenue. And several plagues of insect pests, chiefly in Massachusetts, quickened interest in guarding the health of trees.

After getting a Leipzig Ph.D., Stone returned to Massachusetts Agricultural College and began to teach a generation of botanists new conceptions of plant disease and care. He helped to found Massachusett's system of tree wardens, went about the U.S. diagnosing tree ailments, usually at a glance, and advising communities how to preserve their leanness from gas, electricity, insects, fungi, etc. A good hand with chisel and trowel, Stone devised methods of repairing trees. His teachings stimulated a host of tree surgeons and researchers, who learned to treat trees as living things.

Recent news in the craft of tree surgery:

> The bleeding canker disease, which appeared in New England ten years ago and makes trees ooze from small fissures, is now being treated by injections like those given to man and animals. A small hole is bored into the trunk, a rubber hose inserted and connected with a slow-seeping bottle of organic chemicals.

> Some plant injuries blamed on insects, drought, sun scorch, etc., have recently been traced by Stone's successors at Massachusetts State College to sulfur-dioxide leaks from household refrigerators and large refrigerating plants.

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