April, '12] CHESTNUT BARK DISEASE DISCUSSION 229 



nection with the Bureau, and, owing to the extensive dying of chest- 

 nut in the southern Appalachians, nearly the whole season of 1904 

 was devoted to a study of chestnut insects by an agent of the Bureau 

 from our field station located at Tryon, N. C. 



Therefore, we have already a large amount of data on the subject. 

 Our notes and bibliographical references indicate that more than 300 

 species of insects inhabit the chestnut, including those which are 

 destructive, injurious, beneficial, and neutral in relation to the tree or 

 its products. 



We find references to extensive dying of chestnut timber in the 

 middle and southern Appalachians more than forty years before the 

 present disease was discovered in America. We also find that while 

 insects have been the cause of the death of a considerable percentage 

 of the chestnut within this same region within the past fifteen or twenty 

 years, they are by no means the cause of the prevalent trouble which 

 has practically exterminated the chestnut over large areas in Virginia, 

 North Carolina, and South Carolina. 



Therefore, it is evident that the chestnut throughout its range has 

 has been for a long time in an unhealthy condition. 



We have arranged to cooperate with the Pennsylvania Chestnut 

 Tree Blight Commission in a thorough study of the relation of insects 

 to the inoculation and spread of the disease in that State, but we are 

 not going to confine our work on chestnut insects to one state. We are 

 going to make it one of the special features of the Division of Forest 

 Insects during the coming season and as many other seasons and in 

 as many states as may be necessary to determine the essential facts. 



The problem of interrelation between insects and diseases is a. most 

 complex one which will require the closest kind of co-operation between 

 the Forest Pathologist and Forest Entomologist. We expect to 

 refer everything we find that looks like a fungous or bacterial disease 

 to Doctor Metcalf and, naturally, he will refer all insect matters to 

 us bufwe will have to work together on the interrelated problems. 



The whole problem is one which will require a great deal of scientific 

 investigation before we can arrive at definite conclusions or adopt 

 the best methods of protecting the chestnut from its fungous and 

 insect enemies. 



Mr. Metcalf: I am glad to know that legislation now pending 

 makes it obligatory to take up this work. Regarding the situation in 

 the South, I think there cannot be the slightest question that in the 

 past fifty or eighty years, radical changes have taken place in the 

 range of the chestnut. Many of the facts of the destruction and the 

 death of the chestnut tree years ago, are matters of written record, and 

 although inadequately described, these old accounts led us to inves- 



