THE BRONZE BIRCH BORER 

 Agrilus anxius Gory 



Order Coleoptera ; family Buprestid;e 

 The birch trees with their graceful habits, their slender, often pendu- 

 lous branches, and their picturesque trunks are conspicuous features of 

 any landscape. The European white birch in its various weeping and 

 cut-leaved forms has been extensively planted in American city parks and 

 private lawns. Its artistic beauty, with its silvery stemmed branches and 

 fluttering leaves " floating at the discretion of the winds " makes the white 

 birch a constant source of delight both in summer and winter. As com- 

 pared with the elm or maple, the white birch is considered a short-lived tree, 

 but they frequently survive to grace a landscape for thirty years or more. 

 It is with much regret, therefore, that this Experiment Station finds it 

 necessary through this bulletin to 

 announce to lovers of these beau- 

 tiful white birches that a deadly 

 insect enemy has recently ap- 

 peared which is fast destroying 

 these trees in city parks and on 

 home grounds. Hundreds of the 

 finest specimens of these graceful 

 trees in Buffalo, (see frontis- 

 piece) Ithaca and other cities and 

 towns of New York have suc- 

 cumbed to this enemy within the 

 past eight years. About half of 

 the score of white birches on the 

 Cornell University Campus ( Fig. 

 34), some of them over thirty 

 years old, have been killed by 

 the insect within three years ; and 

 several of the remaining trees 

 are infested and will not survive 

 more than a year or two. These 

 facts demonstrate the seriousness 

 of the situation, and demand that 

 city authorities and private own- 

 ers of these valuable trees ac- 'P^p. yt.— a, Characteristic rusty brown s{wts 

 . . . ... on bark over tlic borer ui autumn, natural 



quamt themselves with the de- size; b, birch branch shoiving the peculiar 

 tails of the work and life-habits r'dgcd effect over the burroiv of borer, re- 



j. , . . ,. , duced in size. 



01 this insect so that remedial 



measures may be promptly and judiciously applied. 



139 



