74 



A PRIMER OF FORESTRY. 



ravages attain enormous proportions. Thus a worm, 

 which afterwards develops into a sawfly, has since 1882 

 killed nearly every full-grown Larch in the Adirondacks 

 by eating away the leaves. ( See fig. G7.) Even the small 



and vigorous Larches do 

 not escape altogether from. 

 these attacks. Conifers, 

 such as the Larch and 

 Spruce, are much more 

 likely to suifer from the 

 attacks of insects than 

 broadleaf trees. About 

 the year 187G small bark 

 beetles began to kill the 

 mature Spruce trees in 

 the Adirondacks, and ten 

 years later, when the 



Worst of the attack Was 

 past, the forest Was practi- 



cally deprived of all its 

 largest Spruces. This 



pest is still at work in northern New Hampshire and in 



Maine. 



FOREST FUNGI. 



Fungi attack the forest in many ways. Some kill 

 the roots of trees, some grow upward from the ground 

 into the trees and change the sound wood of the trunks 

 to a useless rotten mass, and the minute spores (or seeds) 

 of others float through the air and come in contact with 

 every external part of the tree above ground. (See fig. 

 68.) Wherever the wood is exposed there is danger 

 that spores will find lodgment and breed disease. This 



FIG. 68. Rotting wood from an old Red 

 Fir stub. The young Hemlock to the 

 right began life on the bark of the 

 Fir. Olympic Forest Reserve, Wash- 



