PINE BEETLE IN LARCH, 141 
branches trimmed off are used for traps, they are said to answer best 
by being set up against the trees, not laid flat on the ground, where 
they would be in wet grass or surroundings. The fallen timber lies partly 
above the grass, but the poles and boughs are more readily covered. 
Clearing the shoots which have been tunnelled by the beetles is 
rather a difficult matter. It would be useful if it could be done, but 
many are out of reach on the trees, and when they fall below, it is a 
great chance if the beetle is to be found within. But if collecting is 
tried, this should be done into a pail, with sticky material in it, which 
will prevent the beetles getting away, for they are very clever, on alarm, 
at rapidly leaving their burrows and falling to the ground. Many of 
these beetles hybernate in the forest rubbish; but here it seems im- 
possible to bring remedial measures to bear, as firing it in weather dry 
enough for the purpose would probably be ruinous to the plantations. 
The great point of counteraction of this attack is careful removal 
of all possible breeding-places. 
Al, piniperda in Larch (Larix europea, Decandolle).—Although this 
infestation is chiefly recorded as attacking Scotch Fir (Pinus sylvestris, 
Linn.), yet it is not limited to this species, but is found to occur on 
other kinds of Pines; and we have a very notable example of it being 
found by Dr. W. Somerville (Lecturer on Forestry in the University 
of Edinburgh) in his own Larches on the estate of Corniston, Lanark- 
shire, N.B. ‘The account of this attack was given by Dr. Somerville, 
from his own personal observations, in a paper read by him before the 
Royal Society of Edinburgh, on July 7th, 1890, in which he drew 
attention to the circumstance that, ‘‘ as occasion demands, this insect 
has been found to utilise as a breeding-place every species of Pinus, 
but, so far, in HKurope or North America, no case has been noted of 
any trees belonging to the genus Laria having been similarly attacked.” 
In Asia (Dr. Somerville noted) a case had been recorded in the district 
of the Boganida, in Siberia. 
In the case of Dr. Somerville’s trees, he noted that in the beginning 
of the year of his report (1890), in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, on 
a south-west slope, at an elevation of some 800 feet, he found that 
several Larches, which had been felled during the previous winter, 
were attacked by large numbers of this insect. Hylastes palliatus was 
also present, but by far the greater number of galleries were the work 
of H. piniperda. 
Dr. Somerville noted :—‘ The greater abundance of fluid resinous 
matter in the Larch, as compared with the Scots Pine, seems to have 
considerably interfered with the work of forming galleries. . . . Even 
in some of the trees attacked I found unfinished galleries quite full of 
resinous secretions, and containing the dead bodies of the male and 
female insects, which had doubtless been drowned or suffocated by the 
resinous exudations.”’ 
Dr. Somerville was kind enough to give me a copy of his paper, 
with permission to make use of his information, which I gladly availed 
myself of in my Annual Report for 1890; he also favoured me with 
a specimen of the infested Larch bark showing several examples of 
