834 FIFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



to BaDgor. From personal observation and inquiry it is safe for us to 

 report that east of the Penobscot liiver, in eastern Maine, south of 

 Aroostook County, there are no areas of dead spruce. Eeturning to 

 Brunswick from Bangor, the characteristic jjatches or large clumps of 

 dead spruce and fir were not seen until we reached a point south of 

 Richmond, and near Bowdoinham, on and near tide- water on the Cat- 

 hauce River. The general absence of any extensive areas of dead spruces 

 around the Rangeley Lakes and the White Mountains has already been 

 referred to in our rei)ort. It thus appears that the injury from this worm 

 has been confined, at least south of Aroostook County, to an area on 

 the coast extending from Portland to Warren, and extending but a few 

 miles inland from the sea or tide-water. (See map, Plate xii.) 



The injury resulting from the attacks of the bud-caterpillar are char- 

 acteristic, as we have stated, the trees dying in masses or clumps of 

 greater or less extent, as if the moths had spread out from different cen- 

 ters before laying their eg^s and the caterpillars, hatching, had eaten the 

 buds and leaves, and caused the trees to locally perish. From all we 

 have learned the past season we are now convinced that the spruce bud- 

 worm [Tortrix fumiferana) is the primary cause of the disease on the 

 coast. As remarked to us by the Rev. Elijah Kellogg, of Harpswell, Me., 

 who has observed the habits of these caterpillars more closely than aoy 

 one else we have met, where the worms have once devoured the buds 

 the tree is doomed. This, as Mr. Kellogg remarked, is due to the fact 

 that there are in the spruce but a few buds, usually two or three at the 

 end of a twig; if the caterpillars destroy these the tree does not repro- 

 duce them until the year following. If any one will examine the buds 

 of the spruce and fir they will see that this must be the case. Hence 

 the ease with which the attacks of this caterpillar, when sufficiently 

 abundant, destroy the tree. We have not noticed that the spruce and 

 fir throw out new buds in July and August after such an invasion, the 

 worm disappearing in June. On the other hand, the hackmatack or 

 larch when wholly or partly defoliated by the saw-fly worm {Nematus) 

 soon sends oat new leaves. By the end of August we have observed 

 such leaves about a quarter of an inch long. In the following spring a 

 larch which has been stripped of its leaves the summer previous will 

 leave out again freely, although the leaves are always considerably, 

 sometimes one-half, shorter. Now, if any one will examine the leaf buds 

 of the larch it will be seen that they are far more numerous than in the 

 spruce and fir or other species of the genus Ahies, being scattered along 

 the twig at intervals of from a line to half an inch apart. Hence the 

 superior vitality of the larch, at least as regards its power of overcom- 

 ing or recuperating from the effects of the loss of its leaves in midsum- 

 mer. Besides this, the bud- worm of the spruce and fir is most active 

 and destructive in June, at the time the tree is putting forth its buds, 

 while the hackmatack, which drops its leaves in the autumn, has become 

 wholly leaved out some weeks before the saw-fly worms appear. For 



