228 HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 



richly illustrated works. Such a work as that of Ratzeburg 

 entitled "Animals Injuring Forests," has a double value. 

 Not only is it of high practical importance, but the minute 

 information therein contained regarding the habits of the 

 destructive insects and their many parasites, the relation 

 of the trees themselves to the animal world, the peculiar 

 diseases resulting from their attacks, the deformities and 

 changes wrought not only in single trees, but extended 

 through lai'go tracts of forest, all bear on theoretical points 

 in biology, such as the supposed struggle for existence in 

 organized beings, the origin of 'sports, strains, races, varie- 

 ties and species, which combine to lend the highest interest 

 to such stores of facts as are to be found in the works of 

 this learned German. 



Let us now walk through the pine woods, and notice the 

 work of some of the more remarkable insects. I could take 

 the reader by a favorite walk in the pine woods of Maine, 

 and show him among a splendid growth of tall, straight, 

 white pines, one enormous tree whose girth twenty feet from 

 the ground is between fifteen and twenty feet. Above that 

 the trunk divides into four branches, curved outwards at 

 their base, forming a double crotch. In another walk I 

 could show him several large trees, all within a few rods 

 of each other, variously gnarled and distorted, either with 

 single curved trunks, or double or triple-headed monsters, 

 specimens of vegetable monstrosities which would delight a 

 Geoffrey St. Hilaire or Dareste. 



What is the origin of this deformation ? It is a common 

 little weevil which has the habit of laying its eggs late in the 

 spring in the terminal shoots of white pine bushes. Sev- 

 eral grubs hatch out and burrow in various directions under 

 the bark. As they grow apace they sink into the wood, 

 as far as the pith, and by the end of the second summer, 

 according to Professor Peck, as quoted by Harris, they have 

 each made a little cell in the wood, cleverl}' lined with pine 



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