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The Southern Pine Beetle. 9 
in the location of a forest insect field station at Spartanburg, S. C., 
for the purpose of studying the character and extent of the depreda- 
tions and conducting a campaign of instruction and demonstration 
on the proper methods for controlling the beetle and protecting the 
remaining living timber. This work was prosecuted in such a man- 
ner as to convince the majority of the owners of pine within the 
areas covered by the representatives of the Bureau of Entomology 
that the southern pine beetle is a menace to the pine forests of the 
Southern States. There was a general and widespread interest mani- 
fested throughout the worst affected sections, and there is evidence 
that sufficient action was taken by the owners, in the utilization or 
treatment of infested trees according to the recommendations, to 
protect the remaining living pine from further depredations. 
CHARACTER AND RANGE OF DEPREDATIONS IN IQII. 
The study in 1911 of the character and extent of the depredations 
by the southern pine beetle in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, 
North Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Louisiana, 
Maryland, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee, and information con- 
veyed by correspondents from all sections of the South, showed that 
in the aggregate a vast amount of timber had been killed by the 
southern pine beetle during 1910 and 1911. The dying and dead 
trees occurred as scattering individuals or in clumps, large patches, 
and in some places whole forests. All were more or less conspicuous 
by their fading, red, black, or denuded tops, plainly indicating the 
presence of the beetle or the progress of its work. 
PATCHES OF DYING PINE A MENACE TO THE HEALTHY 
TREES. 
It was found that each patch of dying trees, with their fading and 
greenish-brown tops, located anywhere in the Southern States is a 
menace to the living pine within a radius of 3 or 4 miles. The 
broods of the southern pine beetle developing in the bark of the trees 
of one such center of infestation may swarm in any direction and 
settle in the healthy timber. Thus one or more additional patches 
are killed, until nearly all of the large as well as the small pine 
over an extensive area is dead. 
When these centers of infestation are numerous within the con- 
fines of a county, or even a larger section of territory, they can only 
be compared ‘with the starting of so many forest fires; and, as has . 
been demonstrated, they may lead to far greater destruction of 
merchantable pine than has ever been recorded as resulting from fire 
in the Southern States. Therefore they demand similar prompt and 
radical action on the part of the owners in order to protect their 
living pine. 
