THE GIANT SAWFLY 



All sorts of animals, insects, and funguses are ready to 

 attack our young tree. Squirrels in play will nibble off its 

 leading shoots. Cattle will rub against its bark, and the 

 roe-deer, a very beautiful creature, and yet a destructive little 

 fiend from the tree's point of view, nibbles the young shoots 

 and tears the bark with its horns. 



A tree's life is full of peril and danger. Yet it is most 

 wonderfully adapted to survive them. Take a knife and cut 

 into the bark of a pine tree, and immediately a drop of resin 

 collects and gathers on the wound. After a short time this 

 will harden and entirely cover the scar. Why ? 



There are in the woods, especially in Canada and North 

 Russia, hundreds of insects belonging to the most different 

 kinds, which have the habit of laying their eggs in the wood 

 of tree-trunks. In those regions the entire country is in the 

 winter covered with snow and ice for many months. Insects 

 must find it difficult to live, for the ground is frozen to a 

 depth of many feet. Where are the eggs of these insects to 

 be stored up so that they can last through the winter without 

 injury? 



There is one insect at least, or rather many, of which the 

 Giant Sawfly may be taken as an example, which have 

 ingeniously solved this problem. She painfully burrows 

 into the trunk of a tree and deposits her eggs with a store 

 of food at the end of the buiTow. A drop of resin or 

 turpentine, which would clog her jaws, makes this a difficult 

 task, but, as we find in many other instances, it is not 

 impossible, but only a difficulty to conquer. If it were not 

 for the resin, trees might be much more frequently destroyed 

 by Sawflies than they are. 



The larva of the Sawfly is a long, fleshy maggot. Just at 

 the end are the strong woodcutting jaws by which it 



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