REPORT OF THE SOCIETY 33 



injured spruce. In New Brunswick the budworm outbreak apparently lasted 

 longer in some localities and the primary injury was accordingly perhaps more 

 severe. Serious injmy to spruce has been confined almost entirely to red 

 spruce which occurs in Southern Quebec and in New Brunswick. 



The weakened balsam left by the budworm outbreak was attacked by 

 the Balsam Bark Weevil, Pissodes dubius Rand, the Balsam Bark-beetle, 

 Pityokteines sparsus Lee, and the Sap Rot Fungus, a species of Armillaria. 

 These three destructive agents have been and still are killing great quantities 

 of the remaining unthrifty balsam each year in much of Quebec Province, south 

 of the Height of Land and in New Brunswick, so that, en great areas, in the 

 aggregate thousands of square miles in extent, almost the entire stand of 

 balsam has already been killed or evidently will die within the next few years. 



The development of the budworm outbreak towards the west was much 

 less rapid. Although it passed in a few years southwesterly over the DuMoine 

 and Kipewa watershed and finally died away in the hardwood and cultivated 

 areas of the Ottawa Valley the progress directly westward along the Upper 

 Ottawa River north of Lake Expanse and towards Lake Abitibi was apparently 

 exceedingly slow. Our first reports of possible budworm injury in that little 

 known country were received in the fall of 1919. During the summer of 1920 

 our surveys revealed an enormous budworm outbreak about Long Lake in 

 Western Quebec and extending across the Ontario boundary almost as far as 

 Lake Temagami. Forest sample plots were laid out near Long Lake to aid 

 in detailed studies, and surveys by canoe were undertaken to determine the 

 area of the infestation, the western margin of the outbreak and the direction 

 in which it was spreading most rapidly. The injury we know would affect 

 only the balsam and spruce and would be most severe in stands containing a 

 high percentage of balsam. These stands were located very often in the centre 

 of the blocks into which that part of the country about Lake Temagami is 

 divided by the water courses and the belts of pine with which they are bordered. 



It was evident that the only way to obtain rapidly the information we 

 desired was to view the infested country from the air and map the diseased 

 areas as determined from the changed colour of the dead and affected trees. 

 For a few weeks during the last two summers we have carried oat a hydroplane 

 survey of the region and have been able to determine the extent of the area 

 affected and, roughl}'-, the western boundary of the outbreak. 



Until last summer, in Quebec Province, we were studying the after-affects 

 of a budworm outbreak since the caterpillars had largely disappeared from the 

 Quebec forest, excepting possibly the country north-east of Lake Expanse, 

 before we commenced our investigations. In New Brunswick the primary 

 budworm outbreak continued until last summer and although it has now 

 nearly disappeared in that Province as well, it has left behind it a terrible wreck 



