THE SPRUCE BUD-WORM. 835 



these reasons, while the spruce and fir usually die if most of the leaves 

 and buds are eaten after the first season's attack, the larch may usually 

 survive the loss of leaves for two seasons in succession. 



In addition to the facts regarding tlie great abundance of the bud- 

 worm we may cite information given us by Prof. L. A. Lee, of Bowdoin 

 College, who observed the bud-worms in June, 1880, upon the spruces 

 at Prince's Point, Brunswick, and had no doubt but that they were suf- 

 ficient to cause the death en masse of these trees. In 1883 we visited 

 the locality, and many of the trees had been cut down for fuel. 



Professor Carmichael of Bowdoin College informs me that he noticed 

 the ravages of these worms, or similar ones, on Jewell's Island in 1876. 



From Rev. Mr. Kellogg we learned the following interesting facts re- 

 garding the appearance of a similar, most probably the same, species 

 of caterpillar, even upon the same farm that was ravaged in 1878, early 

 m this century. According to Capt. James Sinnett and Mr. John Jor- 

 dan, of Harpswell, the spruces of Harpswell and Orr's Islands were de- 

 stroyed in 1807. Captain Bishops, whose son made the statement to 

 Mr. Kellogg, cut down the dead spruces on these islands and worked 

 six weeks boiling the sea-water with fuel thus obtained, in order to 

 make salt. This was during the embargo which led to the war of 1812 

 with Great Britain. It is interesting to note that the bud-worm in 1878 

 appeared on the same farm on which the spruces had been destroyed 

 by a worm in 1807, or about eighty years previous. 



During the season of 1886 and 1887, as in 1885, no traces of the cater- 

 pillar or moth of Tortrix fumiferana, formerly so destructive to firs and 

 spruces, were discovered. The moths must be now as rare as before 

 1878. Great progress has also been made by the younger growth of 

 these coniferous trees in repairing the desolation caused by the attacks 

 of this worm. 



Its Habits and Transformations. — The spruce-bud worm, as we ob- 

 served in Cumberland County, also at Phillips, and near the Rangeley 

 Lakes, on the road from Phillips to Rangeley, where the trees by the 

 roadside, as well as in the woods, were attacked by them, so that they 

 looked as if a light fire had passed through them, feeds upon the leaves 

 or needles of the terminal shoots, both the first and previous year's 

 growth. The worm gnaws the base of the needles, separating them 

 from the twig, meanwhile spinning a silken thread by which the needles 

 and bud-scales are loosely attached to the twig; the worm moving 

 about in the space between the twig and the loosened needles and bud- 

 scales, and not, like many leaf-rolling caterpillars, living in a regular 

 tube. 



The caterpillar sometimes draws together two adjacent shoots, but 

 this is rarely done; hence while it is at work it scarcely alters the ap- 

 pearance of the tree, and its presence is only known when the worms 

 are abundant enough to partly defoliate the trees. 



The worms in June, 1883, were in Cumberland County most abundant 



