THE NEW FORESTRY. 2OI 



that has grown up in a dense wood will not stand vicissitudes 

 of weather like a hedge-row tree that has long grown 

 accustomed to exposure. Hartig's ring-shake, p. 191, caused 

 in spruce trees by Trametes pint, is not the ring-shake of 

 hard-woods in this country. At page 285 he just alludes to 

 radial and peripheral cracks that he had " sometimes noticed " 

 in old oaks, but gives no satisfactory explanation as to their 

 cause. 



THE ASH. This species is not troubled seriously with 

 very destructive pests. The bark-boring beetle, Hylesinus 

 fraxinus, is often found on old decaying trees, on which it 

 makes fantastic tracings under the bark ; and the blister 

 beetle, or one of the wasps, causes large blisters to form on 

 the trunk and branches, which finally kill the tree. These 

 blisters are common upon single trees here and there in a 

 wood, some trees being a mass of blister from top to bottom. 

 A puncture is apparently made through the bark in the first 

 instance, and never heals over like other wounds. A ring of 

 new bark is formed round the puncture, and other rings 

 inside of that, until a large, rugged, round blister, perhaps 

 nine inches in diameter and depressed in the centre, where 

 the original wound will be found still open, is formed, such 

 blisters often being many years of age. A kind of scale also 

 attacks young trees, especially weak saplings, and does some 

 damage. The ash is not subject to any other serious 

 complaints. 



THE ELM. This tree, at any age above thirty years, often 

 dies off at the top by slow degrees. We have had to cut 

 many Scotch elms down in mixed woods that were dead or 

 dying from this complaint. The symptoms seem to indicate 

 the presence of the scolytus destructor mentioned by Schlich 

 and others as doing much harm to the elm. Otherwise the 

 tree is generally a good grower either in the forest or open 

 country. 



THE BEECH. Old trees of the beech are often attacked 

 by the beech blight Chermes fagi, which attacks the bark of 

 the trunks, generally near the bottom, and travels upwards, 

 either following decay in the bark or causing it. The bark 

 becomes broken and ruptured and easily detached. " Damp- 

 ing off," caused by a fungi (Phytophthora omnivora), is very 

 destructive among young seedlings, and where it is trouble- 

 some there is no sure preventive of its attacks but a complete 

 change of ground. 



