INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE SPRUCE. 219 
‘ 
102. THE CLUB-HORNED CAPSUS. 
Capsus clavatus Linnzeus. 
Order HEMIPTERA; family CAPSID. 
In July and August, common on the leaves of this and other trees, puncturing then 
and subsisting on their juices, a small oblong black bug, 0.20 long, with three silvery 
white transverse lines on its wing-covers, the middle one longest, the middle joint of 
its antenne long and towards its tip thickened and black, the last joint slender and 
white with its tip black, and the hanches of its legs also white. This bug is equally 
common here asin Europe. Its marks are so peculiar as to remove all doubts of its 
being one and the same species which inhabits both sides of the Atlantic. 
Several other species of bugs occur upon the pine, but as they are 
found in greater numbers upon other kinds of vegetation, it is scarcely 
necessary to notice them under this head. 
INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE SPRUCE (Abies nigra and alba). 
The destruction of spruce and firs in Northern New England in 18738—81.— 
The forests of spruce and fir in Maine, Northern New Hampshire, and 
New York were, about the year 1879, destroyed by the wholesale, the coast 
of Maine from Portland to Eastport and Calais, on the Saint Croix river, 
having especially suffered. In the summer of 1880, during a hasty visit 
to Brunswick, Me., and the shores of Casco Bay, I noticed the great de- 
struction that had been effected in the spruce growths on Mere point and 
on some of the adjacent islands of Casco Bay; but failed to detect the 
cause of the disease, supposing that it was too extensive to be attributed 
to the attacks of insects, and that some meteorological cause, such as 
severe winters or the attacks of some fungus, would better account for 
a destruction so widespread and apparently sudden. 
During the last half of the summer of 1881, spent in Maine, I was 
enabled to make a more careful examination into the causes of the dis- 
ease, and think that without much doubt it was wholly due to the attacks 
of various beetles, and, perhaps, in some cases, of caterpillars. 
About the middle of July Ll went from Brunswick, Me., to the White 
Mountains, and observed a good many dead spruces and firs in the woods 
_on either side of the road from Gorham, N. H., to the Halfway House 
upon Mount Washington. The dead spruces and firs were in nearly all 
cases, especially those which had evidently been cut down during the 
preceding winter (1880-81), riddled by the mines or burrows of the 
spruce bark-borer (Xyloterus bivittatus). 
The spruces were also infested by the common pine longicorn borer, 
Monohammus confusor, the larvie being found to have bored the tree 
in all directions. 
Living hemlock trees, 15 to 20 inches in diameter, were infested by 
large unknown longicorn borers under the bark, while the bark itself 
was mined in all directions by Hadrobregmus, whose burrows were very 
abundant in logs cut down during the past winter near the Glen House, 
