204 Forty-fifth Report on the State Museum. 



Despite its beauty, it is a highly pernicious insect. Not content, as 

 aie most of its associates, with burrowing in dead or sickly vegetation, 

 its attack is usually made on perfectly healthy trees. 



It was my privilege several years ago to f oUoav an attack of this 

 insect on a row of maples at Schoharie, New York, which I passed 

 daily, and had for years observed with pleasure their vigorous ,and 

 healthful growth. As adding to the testimony of Dr. Packard of the 

 attack of healthy trees {Insects Injurious to Forest and Shade Trees 

 — Bulletin No. 7 of the United States Entomological Division, pp. 

 103, 104), I herewith copy the record made under date of November 

 30, 1859: 



I have noticed this autumn, for the first time, that our sugar 

 maples, which we have always regarded as our most valuable sh^de 

 tree, from the almost complete immunity which they have enjoyed in 

 trunk and leaf from insect depredation, have been attacked by a borer 

 so pernicious in its work as to threaten their destruction unless some 

 means shall be found to arrest the attack. 



In its simplest form it reveals itself by the bark parting longi- 

 tudinally and breaking away, disclosing the wood of the tree in a nar- 

 row strip for some five or six inches in length. On the surface of the 

 wood can be seen the furrow of the grub, cut to a slight depth, gradu- 

 ally increasing in its dimensions as it descends, and at the lower end 

 entering the trunk of the tree: over the borders of the groove the 

 growth of sapwood made since the injury, impinges. Thi«), I presume 

 to be the work of a grub proceeding from an egg deposited late in the 

 seas3n, and compelled to seak an early refuge by approaching wdnter. 

 A wound no more serious than this, would close over in two or three 

 years and no permanent injury result. But when the grub has had 

 full time allowed it for its work the injury is far more important. 



In several instances I have traced the farrow, packed tightly with 

 fine powder for two feet or more in extent, with an average breadth at 

 its lower portion of over half an inch and nearly one-fourth of an inch 

 in depth To render it the more serious the grub, almost invariably 

 before entering the ti'ee, leaves its d'-wnward path and winds nearly 

 horizontally around the trunk until it completes about half a circuit. 

 It then enters the trunk an inch or thereabouts back from the end of its 

 b>urrow, ascending at an angle of about ten degrees. The perfect insect 

 emerges from the tree above its point of entrance through an opening 

 which can be probed horizontalh^ for three or four inche'^, the mouth 

 of which is smoothly cut and somewhat elliptical, the broadest diameter 

 Ijeing about .35 of an inch. 



One maple which I have examined, of about ten inches in diameter 

 at the base, which has been more seriously afi^ected than others, and 

 probably the first to be attacked, has been nearly destroyed. Several 

 of the grubs had commenced their ravages side by side, and by their 

 ainited cuttings have in places exposed the trunk for over a hand's 

 breadth The tree has been attacked in various places from above its 

 first limbs nearly to its base, — the injury extending beneath the surface 

 >of the ground. The entire circumference of the tree has been grooved, 



