56 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



But the most numerous, if not the most fatal of the enemies 

 of the pines, are the various kinds of borers which infest the 

 trunk, on the wood of which they subsist. Two species of 

 Urocerus, or horn-tail, neither of them common, (the albicornis 

 and abdominalis; ib. 391 — 2), are found on the pines. They 

 bore long holes in the trunk. The grubs of the one-colored 

 Prionus, {Prionus unicolor, ib. 80), a large beetle, are also found 

 in the same trees. Several beetles of the genus Callidium, live, 

 while in the grub state, in the trunk of pines and firs or in the 

 timber of these trees. One of them, {Callidium bajulus, ib. 83), 

 which is found in "fir, spruce and hemlock wood and lumber," 

 is supposed to have been introduced from Europe. Of the Bu- 

 prestian beetles, the larvae of which are wood-borers and eaters, 

 and several of which are particularly fond of pines, the largest 

 is the Virginian {Buprestis Virginica, ib. 43), which commits 

 great ravages by boring in the trunks of the various kinds of 

 pine trees. A much smaller species, {Buprestis fulvogultata, 

 the tawny -spotted, ib. 45), has been taken from the trunk of the 

 white pine. Young saplings and small limbs of the same spe- 

 cies of tree, are inhabited by a beetle of nearly the same size 

 with the last -mentioned, to which has been given by Professsor 

 Hentz, the name of Dr. Harris's Buprestis, {Buprestis Hamsii, 

 ib. p. 45.) 



The soil natural to most of the pines is a sand formed origi- 

 nally by the crumbling or disintegration of the granitic rocks. 

 These, in the forms of gneiss, mica slate and granite, are the 

 prevailing rocks of Massachusetts; large portions of which, 

 moreover, are overspread by the diluvium of sand formed from 

 them. A large part of the surface was, therefore, and in many 

 places still is, covered with forests of pine. The different species 

 are adapted' to the opposite extremities of moisture and dryness. 

 The pitch pine flourishes on arid and parched sands ; the 

 white cedar thrives in swamps which are inundated almost 

 through the year; the white pine prefers a situation moder- 

 ately dry, but is often found in swamps; the red cedar and larch 

 are found on rocky hills nearly destitute of soil, and the spruce 

 and hemlock grow naturally in places inclined to moisture. 



