224 ox THE RErLANTING OF WOODLANDS. 



have carefully cleared off sucli soil, I never yet saw or 

 found any signs of this insect's work in them, but in- 

 variably found them being speedily reduced by the 

 action of fungus ; and, as they are excluded from light 

 and air, they are more likely, in ordinary circumstances, 

 to decompose more rapidly than if part of them should 

 be left exposed to both of these. 



Q. 6. Then your opinion leads you to the conclusion that the 

 covering up of the stocks would be a means, at least, of 

 reducing their number in any plantation. — A. Exactly .so. 



Q. 7. And you also believe that by carefully removing all large 

 branches, tops of trees, old gate or other large posts, from 

 the neighbourhood of a plantation — particularly of young- 

 ones — that this is the most likely way of retarding, if 

 not of entirely reducing, their means of propagation. — 

 A. I believe those means are the most likely. 



Q. 8. But if you have not found them very injurious to the 

 young plants composing the second crop, in your experi- 

 ence, where wasting branches lay on the giound, other 

 authors state they have found it so ? — A. The insect, 

 being a migratory one, will alight on any object which 

 readily presents itself where the herbage does not com- 

 pletely cover them, and the insect may be tempted 

 otherwise through hunger to go in quest of food ; and 

 the young newly-introduced plants, constituting a part 

 at least of their food, are speedily seized upon and soon 

 injured — if not killed outright. 



Q. 9. Then to what do you ascribe those isolated attacks as 

 having been observable in the plantation you refer to ? 

 — A. A number of the insects mioht be nourished and 

 harboured in a large old stock for a very great length of 

 time, particTilarly if such a stock were in dry porous 

 soil, or in a soil where fungus would not very soon attack 

 it ; and if left uncovered, as referred to, numerous insects 

 would find a suitable lodgment therein. But as I 

 almost invariably saw those isolated attacks were made 

 on little knolls or the slopes of the same, or where the 

 herbage was very scant, I attribute such attacks chiefly 

 to the migratory habit of the insect, and partly to the 

 fact that they may have been harboured in stocks such 

 as those to which I have just referred. 



Q. 10. Then you stated that fungus is often very injurious to 

 young plantations, generally after the beetle has ceased 

 its ravages ; how did you observe this ? — A. In several 

 sections of the young plantation I have referred to, I 

 found fungus and the beetle both at work, though seldom 

 attacking the same plant at one time, though acting in 



