Polesaws, with teeth slanted toward you for pull-cutting, have curved blades that fit into "heads" socketed for 8- to 16-foot handles. Blade and handle are replaceable. When the one wears dull it is not worth resharpening. The other, being of light, brittle wood, has a way of breaking when you drop or step on it. The expense of keeping on hand a spare blade and pole is not exorbitant. The most important and expensive part of your polesaw is its head. Avoid the kind where the blade is fastened in by a wing nut, which a knock can loosen. Better are flat nuts or heavy cotter pins or countersunk screws. Be sure your head has a slot in the back to hold your paint brush. A lot of reaching and clambering is saved by pole-painting your high cuts.

Pole-pruners, like shears, should be selected for rugged-ness and for having the cutter so offset that it will slice flush when laid on properly. The kind operated by a Ian-yard through screw eyes along the pole will stand up longer and repair more easily than the more expensive type on which a hand-lever actuates a rod to the cutting head.

Tree paint (wound dressing) has in recent years become handily available to home owners. It even comes now in handy aerosol cans, for spraying on. The different brands vary little in composition. An asphaltum base with turpentine or mineral oil added is standard. Keep it thinned with linseed oil or it will blister on the wounds. It does not speed callus growth, but it protects wounds until callus covers them by keeping out the fungi of decay. Don't try to "make do" with lead or copper house paints. They peel, and may poison tender tissues. Shun creosote and roofing tars.

Orange shellac, brushed over the bark and sapwood around the edges of a cut before covering the whole wound with tree paint, is desirable but not essential.

The question of when to prune trees is moot even among treemen, but their differences are largely quibbling. In a general way all will accept the classic rule, "Prune when the tool is sharp," which has few exceptions.