22 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 



refuse," and was "utterly destroyed." The old court house at Cowaasville and the old 

 church at West Shefford, in the soundness and clean grain of the pine lumber employed 

 in them, showed the fastidiousness of their builders' choice of materials. 



In the meanwhile, in the struggle for existence, the forest at large was being beaten 

 bai k ; and as Sampson of old said of the Philistines, so the settler might have said of his 

 hacked and dismembered foes, " Heaps upon heaps here they lie !" Blackened piles 

 cumbered the land, to be burned at fitting season, and their remains dragged into new 

 pyres, until, in the language of the people, they were " quite worn out." 



The first clearings for actual settlement were made where hardwood timber 

 abounded, for it was well known that hard-wood stumps rot out in seven or eight years, 

 whereas the stumps of black timber endure for a lifetime. The trees that were utilized 

 in the havoc were the white ash, the brown ash and the basswood, which were split inno 

 fence rails. Now and then a cherry or a bird's-eye maple found its way to the turner's, 

 to be converted into furniture, but too often indiscriminate destruction m ide room for 

 the corn field and the potato patch. Often when the maples were spared to form a 

 sugar bush, carelessness and ill usage insured speedy decay. I frequently saw trees 

 tapped by the acre with slanting gashes a foot long and two or three inches deep, a pro- 

 ceeding which impaired the circulation of the sap, producing a diseased con licioti of the 

 tree, which, as we shall presently see, was peculiarly inviting to the attacks of injurious 

 insects. Those were the days when stately specimens of the bass wood (the lumber of 

 which would now be worth .^20 per thousand) were felled and notched into sections, 

 which were split off and roughly shaped into sap troughs, the larger portion of the wood 

 being wasted in the process. 



As the clearings were enlarged and the dairy afforded more employment and greater 

 profits, the traffic in " black salts " died out, and a second period in the history of the 

 district may be said to have been reached. A third and striking era was opened when, 

 by the enterprise of the late Hon. A. B. Foster, the railway to Waterloo was completed. 

 Not only did farm produce meet with a readier sale, but a demand for hemlock b irk, to 

 supply the southern markets, arose, and men turned their attention more closely to the 

 black timber. The short interval between the hoeing season and hay-time was diligently 

 turned to account in peeling bark — the stripped hemlocks being allowed to lie as they 

 had fallen. In consequence tangled slashes often disfigured the uplands, until a second 

 growth — usually of poplar — hid their deformities. 



Hitherto we have considered man's work in stripping the land of its bosky covering, 

 but the elements played no unimportant part towards the same end. Fierce winds from 

 the low-lying " French country," compressed in the valleys and defiles, again and again 

 rushed up the mountain sides, and wherever they found a break formed by new settle- 

 ments, impinged upon the exposed edges of the forest, and tumbled many goodly trees over, 

 as if some huge monster were rooting amongst them. I know one spot where, for some acres, 

 the trees, after a hurricane, lay in swaths, like grain from the scythe of the mower. 



But, if the wind slew its thousands, fire may be said to have slain its ten thousands. 

 The heedless and untimely burning of a brush heap often started a conflagration which 

 extended for miles. One of the first inhabitants of Iron Hill told me that the grandest 

 sight he ever saw was the fire rushing up through the pine woods on the western slope of 

 Brome mountain. In May, 1877, I rode with the late Sheriff Cowan irom Cowans ville 

 to Philipsburg, and men were pulling down fences and " fighting fire " all along the way. 

 And at Philisbnrg clouds of smoke, sweeping across Missisquoi bay, told that the fire was 

 raging in the State of New York. Great damage was done to the second growth sugar 

 woods by this conflagration, and for several years after maple wood was a bon marche. 



In addition to man and the elements, an innumerable yet unobtrusive army of sap- 

 pers and miners worked upon the forest trees — grubs of beetles and horntails, and cater- 

 pillars of moths. I shall speak of but a few kinds that attacked (1) the "black timber," 

 (2) the hard woods, (3) the poplars. 



