324 KEPOET OF THE COMMISSIONEE OF AGRICULTURE, 



are made exteriorly, but under the bark, they are usually about au 

 iuch apart, and, as we have said, at once by their light color and convex 

 surface attract attention when the bark is torn oil'. 



While this weevil does much injury to the young- white pine trees, it 

 is by no means restricted to such growths, but lays its eggs in the bark 

 and mines the sap-wood of large pine and other coniferous trees. 



Thus I have found the beetles more commonly, and in different stages 

 of growth, in the white pine, April 24; at this date the beetles begin 

 to appear ; and the beetles do not all make their exit from under the 

 bark and lly about by the end of spring, but I have found the beetles 

 under the bark May 30, and even as late as the 11th of August, when a 

 pu})a and beetle occurred, the latter somewhat pale and immature. 



This weevil is of common occurrence in the bark of spruce trees G to 

 10 inches in diameter, where I have found them, during the middle of 

 August, at Brunswick, Me. Tlie grub and pupa occurred near the Glen 

 House, White Mountain, New Hampshire, at the end of July in the IJr; 

 on the 30th of July I took five mature beetles from under the bark of a 

 hemlock tree. I have never noticed, however, spruce, fir, or hemlock 

 trees vrhich had been deformed, as is not uncommonly the case with the 

 white pine. 



The life-history of this weevil, then, in brief, is as follows : The eggs 

 are laid early in summer, at intervals, on the terminal shoots of the 

 white pine, or sometimes in the bark of old trees ; the grub on hatching 

 bores into the pith, or simply mines the sap-wood; it becomes full-grown 

 at the end of summer, hibernates, and transforms in the spring to the 

 pupa, most of the beetles appearing through May, when they pair and 

 the eggs are laid ; but soihe delay their apiiearance till June, July, and 

 even August. 



Thus far Ave have said nothing as to the remarkable effects produced 

 by the grubs upon the young trees. When the terminal slioot of a small 

 tree, say 4 or 5 feet high, is tilled in midsummer with these grubs, per- 

 haps fifteen or twenty, or more, gouging or tunneling the inner bark 

 and sap-wood, aud for a part of the way eating the pith, the shoot with 

 the lateral ones next to it, as well as the stock immediately below the 

 terminal shoot will wilt aud gradually die ; the bark will loosen, tbe pitch 

 will ooze out, and by September the shoot will be nearly dead, bkick, 

 and the baric covered externally with white masses of dry pitch. 



The tree thus pruned will fail for one, and probably several, succeed- 

 ing summers, to send out a new terminal shoot; the result will be that 

 the adjoining lateral shoots will continue to grow, their direction will 

 be changed to a neai iy upright one, and instead of a tall shapely young 

 tree, destined to be tlie pride of the forest — and there is no finer orna- 

 mental evergreen tree in our lawns or parks than the white pine — it be- 

 comes distorted, prematurely bent, or its noble shaft becomes replaced 

 by one, two, or half a dozen or more stunted, shriveled aspirants for 

 leadership. 



In walking through any forest of white pines of secondary growth in 

 'Ee-w England or Northern New York, one's attention is-drawn to these 

 deformed trees. They are not necessarily dwarfed, as some are among 

 the largest and noblest trees of the wood. They may occur singly, but 

 often there are several, dilferently affected, growing near each other, 

 though not in clumps. Some have but a siugle bend, a single shoot 

 growing up, the original, and perhaps several, lateral shoots, having been 

 destToyed ; one, we well remember, consists of two shafts which separate 

 about G feet from the ground (see Plate IX, Fig. 3). 



