8 Farmers’ Bulletin 1188. 
comparatively few infested trees are found at any given time. There- 
fore if this small number of dying and infested trees is disposed of 
at the proper time and in the proper manner the cause will be 
removed at small cost and the dying of the pines will stop. 
The cost for the required treatment will ordinarily average about 
30 cents per merchantable-sized tree. 
Protecting the Jiving pine of farmers’ woodlots and small forests 
of average-infested areas of 10 to 15 square miles in the central 
Southern States through a direct control of the beetle will cost from 
1 to 10 cents per acre for the first year and practically nothing there- — 
after for from 10 to 20 years. 
-The protection of the living merchantable pine within a similar 
average area will cost from 5 to 30 cents per thousand feet, board 
measure, or from 4 cent to 10 cents per cord for the first year and 
practically nothing during the next 10 to 20 years. 
If the treated timber can be utilized for fuel, lumber, or any other 
purpose involving a commercial value, the cost will be reduced to a 
minimum, and in many cases a direct profit will be derived from the 
sale of the treated product. 
INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES. 
From time to time since 1842 there have been reports of more or 
less extensive dying of pine timber in the Southern States. 
Extended investigations of the problem were begun by the ento- 
mologist of the West Virginia Experiment Station in 1891 and con- 
tinued at intervals in West Virginia until 1901, and by the experts on 
forest insects of the Bureau of Entomology at different times and in 
all of the Southern States from July, 1902, until 1911. 
The results of these investigations have shown that the death of 
a large percentage of the pine of Virginia and West Virginia in 
the period from 1890 to 1893 was due to an invasion of the southern 
pine beetle, which attacked the healthy trees and girdled and killed 
them by excavating long winding burrows beneath the living bark 
on the main trunks of the trees. 
It has also been shown that this beetle has existed in the Southern 
States for at least 78 years, and there is good evidence that it has 
occupied this region from time immemorial, but it is only at com- 
paratively long intervals that it increases to such numbers as to cause 
widespread depredations. 
During the summer and fall of 1910 and the winter and spring of 
1911 correspondents of the Bureau of Entomology in different sec- 
tions of the South, and especially in the Atlantic and Gulf States, 
reported that the pine was dying in patches, and that in some places 
the trouble was alarming. Therefore it was made the subject of 
special investigation in May, June, and July, 1911, which resulted 
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