REPORTS BY THE HONORARY SCIENTISTS, 193 
One gentleman, in writing to me for information on the Pine 
Beetle (Hylesinus piniperda), sent me an interesting account 
of its ravages in his part of Scotland, and from his letter 
I quote the following :—“ The beetle has made fearful ravages 
among the fir-woods here during the past three years, in trees 
from one hundred years old downwards to plantations three years 
planted, particularly in the neighbourhood of a ‘blow-down,.’ 
Some plantations here, from fifteen to twenty-five years old, are 
completely eaten up, presenting a very sad picture, and not a 
single fir plantation has escaped the attacks of the beetle.” 
In combating Hylesinus piniperda, while some benefit will be 
derived by removing from the trees the shoots bored for feeding 
purposes by the adults which have issued from the pupal condi- 
tion, care being taken that the beetles do not escape in the 
process (which they are very apt to do), and by collecting these 
blown shoots in autumn and winter, yet, as I wrote in my last 
year’s report, “once the beetles have got to work, no remedial 
measure can compare in efficiency with the system of ‘catch- 
trees’ or traps. From February or March onwards till the 
autumn let there be a series of such traps, to be examined at 
regular intervals, and peeled, and the bark burned. These ‘ catch- 
trees’ may be sickly pines, standing in the forest and marked, or 
else trees felled here and there for the purpose. In such trap- 
trees or logs the pine beetles will breed, and in the peeled and 
burnt bark eggs and larvee will be destroyed.” Where the bark 
is thin, and the later stages may be on the outside of the wood, 
means should be employed to kill these after stripping. 
But prevention is always better than cure, and never can this 
principle receive greater justification than in relation to the Pine 
Beetle. All thinnings, therefore, and all felled and blown timber, 
must be removed as quickly as possible, or else barked, for if 
these be allowed to remain, they are all just so many invitations 
to piniperda to come and breed. 
In such careful oversight, and in the adoption of catch-trees and 
traps, the forester will find, beyond all comparison, his best means of 
dealing with the Pine Beetle. The great principle is, “attack in 
the beginning,” for insect onsets cannot be properly combated 
when they have reached a certain degree of intensity. 
In Aberdeenshire Mr Clark has found the squirrel busily at 
work destroying piniperda grubs and pup, from the beginning 
of July till the end of September. These it finds by stripping the 
VOL, XV. PART II. 8 
