28 BULLETIN NO. 3, DIVISION OF ENTOMOLOGY. 
Brunswick from Bangor, the characteristic patches or large clumps of 
dead spruce and fir were not seen until we reached a point south of 
Richmond, and near Bowdoinham, on and near tide water on the Cat- 
hance River. The general absence of any extensive areas of dead spruces 
around the Rangeley Lakes and the White Mountains has already been 
referred to in our report. It thus appears that the injury from this worm 
has been confined, at least south of Aroostook County, to an area on 
the coast extending from Portland to Warren, and extending but afew 
miles inland from the sea or tide-water. 
The injury resulting from the attacks of the bud-caterpillar are char- 
acteristic, as we have stated, the. trees dying in masses or clumps of 
greater or less extent, as if the moths had spread out from different cen- 
ters before laying their eggs and the caterpillars, hatching, had eaten the 
buds and leaves, and caused the trees to locally perish. From all we 
have learned the past season we are now convineed that the spruce bud- 
worm (Tortrix fumiferana) is the primary cause of the disease on the 
coast. Asremarked to us by the Rev. Elijah Kellogg, of Harpswell, Me., 
who has observed the habits of these caterpillars more closely than any 
one else we have met; where the worms have once devoured the buds the 
tree is doomed. This, as Mr. Kellogg remarked, is due to the fact that 
there are in the spruce but a few buds, usually two or three at the end 
of a twig; if the caterpillar destroys these the tree does not reproduce 
them until the year following. If any one will examine the buds of the 
spruce and fir they will see that this must be the case. Hence the ease 
with which the attacks of this caterpillar; when sufficiently abundant, 
destroy the tree. We have not noticed that the spruce and fir throw 
out new buds in July and August after such an invasion, the worm dis- 
appearing in June. On the other hand, the hackmatack or larch when 
wholly or partly defoliated by the saw-fly worm (Nematus) soon sends 
out new leaves. By the end of August we have observed such leaves 
about a quarter of an inch long. In the following spring a larch which 
has been stripped of its leaves the summer previous will leave out again 
freely, although the leaves are always considerably, sometimes one-half, 
shorter. Now, if any one will examine the leaf buds of the larch it will 
be seen that they are far more numerous than in the spruce and fir or 
other species of the genus Abies, being scattered along the twig at inter- 
vals of from a line to half an inch apart. Hence the superior vitality of 
the larch, at least as regards its power of overcoming or recuperating 
from the effects of the loss of its leaves in midsummer. Besides this, 
the bud-worm of the spruce and fir is most active and destructive in June, 
at the time the tree is putting forth its buds, while the hackmatack, 
which drops its leaves in the autumn, has become wholly leaved out 
some weeks before the saw-fly worms appear. For these reasons, while 
the spruce and fir usually die if most of the leaves and buds are eaten 
after the first season’s attack, the larch may usually survive the loss of 
leaves for two seasons in succession. 
