CORRESPONDENCE AND QUERIES 



245 



Farewell, old oaks, that once were wont to crown 

 For deeds of valor and of great renown ! 

 O trees of Jupiter, Dordona's grove. 

 How ingrate man repays thy treasure trove 

 That first gave food, that human-kind might eat, 

 And furnished shelter from the storm and heat. 



Ah, how unhappy he, that pins his faith 

 In forms that will but vanish as a wraith ; 

 How true it is that everything must change, 

 And take on habits that are new and strange ! 



The peaks of Athos shall in plains be lost ; 

 The Vale of Tempe to a mount be tossed ; 

 Where Neptune rules shall all be sowed to grains; 

 All form is lost ; matter alone remains. 



CORRESPONDENCE AND QUERIES 



Natural Checks to Distribution of White Pine 



I'he Editor of American Forestry: 



While studying charts of distribution of 

 certain species of conifer, I could see no 

 reason why the white pine (P. strohus) 

 should not occur indigenously in abundance 

 near my country place at Stamford and 

 Greenwich, Conn. There was no natural 

 check in evidence, and I proceeded to set 

 out several thousand of these trees, along 

 with other conifers seven years ago. Every 

 year since that time more white pine have 

 been added, but it is apparent that the species 

 cannot be expected to thrive in this region, 

 which the charts show is normally favor- 

 able. My loss amounted to something like 

 10,000 white pines, varying in age from 

 two years to ten years at the time of 

 transplantation. These trees came from va- 

 rious nurseries, and some were raised from 

 seed in my own nursery. Some were com- 

 mon seedlings, others were stock "trans- 

 plants," and the larger ones were chiefly 

 shipped from nurseries, with balls of earth 

 about the roots of the trees. A few hundred 

 trees were lost in ordinary ways — girdled by 

 rabbits and field mice, terminal buds eaten by 

 red squirrels and roots eaten by pine mice, 

 but the sweeping destruction has been caused 

 by the white, wooly aphis and by another 

 aphis which I have not classified. The latter 



5 



is not so abundant as the white aphis, but it 

 multiplies on individual trees so rapidly that 

 the tree is more quickly destroyed. It is a 

 small, dark-colored aphis which runs nearly 

 as rapidly as the ant guardians when dis- 

 turbed. The only white pine trees that I have 

 been able to save are a few that have re- 

 ceived constant supervision on the part of my 

 superintendent, who personally wipes every 

 infected area of bark with a sponge soaked in 

 a decoction of Persian insect powder. He 

 goes over each infected tree several times in 

 the course of a season, and will not allow 

 any of my other employes to take the re- 

 -sponsibility of caring for the few living white 

 pines. Tobacco stems are used for mulch 

 about the roots of these trees. Trees which 

 have been lost by the thousand were set in 

 all sorts of soil, — swamps, sand, rocky cliffs 

 and rich cultivated ground. All shared the 

 same fate, in a general area something more 

 than a mile in length. Here and there in the 

 neighborhood, on other properties, a very few 

 white pines are seen, but it is my feeHng that 

 this region is unfavorable for white pine, not 

 because of soil or climate, but because the 

 two species of aphis have been indigenous 

 to the locality, and have always served as a 

 natural check to distribution of this species of 

 pine. 



Robert T. Morris. 



New York. 



