10 THE DYING OF PINE IN THE SOUTHERN STATES. 
The cost for the required treatment will ordinarily average about 
16 cents per tree. 
Protecting the living 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 
thereafter for from 10 to 20 years. 
The protection of the ling 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 started by the 
entomologist of the West Virginia Experiment Station in 1891 and 
continued 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 the present 
time. 
The results of these investigations have shown that the death of a 
large percentage of the pine of Virginia and West Virginia in 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 40 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 sections 
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 investi- 
gation in May, June, and July, 1911, which resulted in the location 
of a forest insect field station at Spartanburg, S. C., for the purpose 
of studying the character and extent of the depredations and 
conducting a campaign of instruction and demonstration on the 
proper methods for controlling the beetle and protecting the remain- 
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