THE DYING OF PINE IN THE SOUTHERN STATES: 
CAUSE, EXTENT, AND REMEDY. 
During the past few years the dying of pine in the southern Atlantic 
and Gulf States, from Maryland to Texas, inclusive, has attracted 
attention and has been the subject of special investigation and 
extensive correspondence. 
CAUSE OF THE DYING OF PINE. 
In the areas designated as the shortleaf pine and loblolly pine 
belts, as well as in parts of the longleaf pine belt, the death of the pine 
has been caused by the southern pine beetle, while in Florida and cer- 
tain other sections it is apparently due to a combination of other 
but similar bark-boring beetles. 
THE SOUTHERN PINE BEETLE. 
The southern pine beetle was described in 1868 under the tech- 
nical name Dendroctonus frontalis from specimens collected in North 
Carolina or South Carolina. 
It is a small brownish or black beetle, somewhat smaller than a 
grain of rice. It flies in March to December in the more southern 
sections, and from May to November in its northern range. It 
- attacks the middle to upper portions of the trunks of healthy pine 
and spruce trees, causing their death by excavating long, winding 
burrows or egg galleries (figs. 1, 3), which extend through the inner 
layers of the living bark and mark the surface of the wood (fig. 2). 
Eggs are deposited along the sides of these galleries, from which 
young grubs (larvee) hatch and then feed on the inner bark until they 
have attained the size of the parent beetles, when they mine into 
the outer bark and transform to the dormant (pupal) stage, and 
later to the adult or beetle stage. The beetles then emerge to fly in 
search of other living trees in which this process of attack and devel- 
opment is repeated. 
The winter is passed in the bark of the living and dying trees in 
all stages of development. The more advanced individuals begin 
to emerge and fly in March to May and the remainder continue to 
develop and emerge until about the last of July, so that by: this time 
all of the trees that were attacked during the previous fall and early 
winter are completely dead and abandoned by the beetles. 
15842°—Bull. 476—11 5 
