PROTECTION AGAINST ANIMALS. 3881 
mense value as a reservoir of moisture and a regulator of the 
flow of springs; and, finally, it exposes the surface-roots to the 
drying influence of sun and wind, to accidental mechanical 
injury from the tread of animals or men, and, in cold climates, 
to the destructive effects of frost. 
Protection against Wild Animals. 
It is often necessary to take measures for the protection of 
young trees against the rabbit, the mole, and other rodent quad- 
rupeds, and of older ones against the damage done by the larve 
of insects hatched upon the surface or in the tissues of the bark, 
or even in the wood itself. The much greater liability of the 
artificial than of the natural forest to injury from this cause is 
perhaps the only point in which the superiority of the former 
to the latter is not as marked as that of any domesticated vege- 
table to its wild representative. But the better quality of the 
wood and the much more rapid growth of the trained and 
regulated forest are abundant compensations for the loss thus 
occasioned, and the progress of entomological science will, 
perhaps, suggest new methods of preventing the ravages of 
insects. Thus far, however, the collection and destruction of 
the eggs, by simple but expensive means, has proved the most 
effectual remedy.* 
* T have remarked elsewhere that most insects which deposit and hatch 
their eggs in the wood of the natural forest confine themselves to dead trees. 
Not only is this the fact, but it is also true that many of the borers attack 
only freshly-cut timber. Their season of labor is a short one, and unless the 
tree is cut during this period, it is safe from them. In summer you may hear 
them plying their augers in the wood of a young pine with soft, green bark, as 
you sit upon its trunk, within a week after it has been felled, but the wind- 
falls of the winter lie uninjured by the worm and even undecayed for centuries. 
In the pine woods of New England, after the regular lumberman has removed 
the standing trees, these old trunks are hauled out from the mosses and leaves 
which half cover them, and often furnish excellent timber. The slow decay 
of such timber in the woods, it may be remarked, furnishes another proof of 
the uniformity of temperature and humidity in the forest, for the trunk of a 
tree lying on grass or ploughland, and of course exposed to all the alterna- 
