INSECT DAMAGING SPRUCE TREES 

 THE SPRUCE BUD-WORM 



By J. M. Briscoe, Professor of Forestry 



Many inquiries have been received during the present year in 

 regard to an insect which is doing considerable damage to the 

 spruce and fir trees in this state. Specimens of the insect have 

 been received both by the Experiment Station and the Forestry 

 Department of the University of Maine. These specimens have 

 been identified by the entomologists as the larvae or caterpillars 

 of the spruce bud-moth (Tortrix fumiferana) which injure the 

 young growth of spruce and fir, and sometimes also hemlock 

 and larch. 



This insect eats the buds and young leaves of spruce and fir 

 chiefly, causing a brown and withered appearance of the in- 

 fested trees. 



About one hundred years ago the spruces west of the Pe- 

 nobscot river and along the coast of Maine were badly injured 

 and many of them killed by the attacks of an insect believed to 

 be this same species. Some thirty to thirty-five years ago an- 

 other outbreak of the spruce bud-moth occurred, lasting four 

 to five years. During this attack also many of the spruces and 

 firs along the coast were injured, and many of these trees while 

 not killed outright by this insect, were, owing to their weakened 

 condition, left as an easy prey to the spruce bark beetles. Dr. 

 A. S. Packard in a paper written at that time says — "The 

 pleasure of driving over this picturesque road, with its striking 

 northern, harsh and wild scenery and frequent glimpses of 

 Casco Bay in former years greatly enhanced by riding through 

 bits of deep dark spruce forests, has been not a little marred by 

 the acres or even square miles of dead spruces, stripped of their 

 dark sea green foliage, reduced to skeletons, and presenting a 

 ghostly, saddening and depressing sight, which border the road. 



