78 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Bostrychus typographus, B. chalcographus and B. curvidens, and one 

 of the Pissodes. The invasion, which has been something intense, 

 appears happily to be passing away. The damage of 1904 was 

 the worst, but the number of trees which had to be felled by 

 reason of the attack of the first two of the above-mentioned 

 insects is alone given, viz., 14,603. In 1905 — for all the 

 insects — 15,701 trees were felled, while in 1906 only 4433 trees 

 were attacked. 



M. Hickel has a note to the effect that the approach of a 

 good beech-mast year can be foreseen in the preceding autumn 

 from the occurrence of swelled buds destined to bear fruit. 

 These are some 8 millimetres in diameter, whereas the leaf-buds 

 are only 3 or 4 millimetres thick ; the former are generally 

 shorter and always more obtuse, besides being thicker. Mathieu, 

 the celebrated botanist, mentions this, and it is probably well 

 known already to many. The following interesting quotation, 

 from Mathieu, is also given by M. Hickel concerning these 

 flower-buds : " Their abundance, their rarity, or their complete 

 lack determines, nearly certainly, from the month of August the 

 kind of mast of the following year. Thus the irregularity in the 

 fructification of this species cannot be explained by the action of 

 spring frosts alone. It is evident that the temperature of the 

 year in which the buds are formed plays a preponderating part 

 in the fructification." M. Hickel adds that, although a good 

 acorn year cannot be prognosticated in a similar way, yet the 

 fact that good beech and oak mast years have a way of coinciding 

 renders it possible to tell to some extent when a good acorn year 

 may be hoped for. 



M. Emile Mer gives the results — in a number of tables and in 

 a variety of ways — of the comparison of two nearly similarly 

 situated plots of hornbeam coppice, the one thinned of its small 

 shoots and the other unthinned. The thinning was made in 

 1 89 1, but for certain reasons it was not possible to begin the 

 measurements till ten years later. They were accordingly made 

 in 1 901 and 1906, and M. Mer shows that as a rule the coppice- 

 shoots grew the more in diameter and height as there were fewer 

 shoots on the stool ; and that (in the case in point) the maximum 

 volume and maximum value were attained with stools having four 

 shoots. The figure would, of course, differ according to species 

 and other factors, and the actual value of thinning an oak coppice 

 would be less than thinning a coppice of a species which stands 



