28o THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



observed Hylastes damage in a young plantation of Scots 

 pine, larch, and spruce, and obtained H. ater and H. 

 cuniculaTins at work. Adjoining this plantation a small area 

 of woodland, consisting of spruce and Scots pine, in which 

 the spruce predominated, had been and was still being felled. 

 During the spring of 1916, this smaller area was planted up 

 with four-year-old plants of Scots pine, larch and spruce. 

 It is on this newly planted area that my observations have 

 been made. 



I believe it to have been infected from the larger, older 

 plantation on which I first observed Hylastes at work in 

 October 1915, for at that time out of seven stumps examined 

 only one yielded Hylastes (and only three specimens at 

 that), all H. ater. 



In 19 16, the youngest plantation was badly infested, and 

 in August one-third of the young plants had been destroyed 

 chiefly by H. cnnic2ilarius. Further, the spruce stumps on 

 the area yielded numbers of H. cunicularius larvae, pupae and 

 adults, while a few showed galleries containing eggs with the 

 females still at work. The Scots pine stumps, only about 

 twenty in number, yielded H. ater. These facts lead me to 

 believe, as I have said, that the area was infected from the 

 larger older plantation, but how infected I have not been 

 able to discover. 



The plantation then under observation consists of an 

 area full of spruce stumps and roots. Now it is a feature of 

 the spruce that it is shallow-rooted. Its roots do not go deep 

 in the soil, but extend for long distances just below the soil 

 surface and are often exposed at certain points. On these 

 roots H. cunicularius must occur in hundreds. I have taken 

 adults on a portion of a root fifteen feet distant from its 

 source at the stump. In this network of infected roots the 

 young conifers have been planted, and the wonder is, not that 

 half of them will probably be destroyed before the year is 

 out, but that any should survive. 



One most interesting feature of this attack must be 

 noticed. After the area in question had been completely 

 felled, the forester took the precaution of burning all the 

 brushwood on the top of the stumps, thus charring them and 



