202 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



SYCAMORE, BIRCH, ALDER, MOUNTAIN ASH, POPLAR, 

 WILLOW, LIME, CHESTNUT, HORNBEAM, CHERRY, WALNUT. 

 We class these together. All of them suffer more or less 

 from insects and diseases, but not to an extent to cause 

 anxiety, and so far as we are aware no complaints of serious 

 injury have been made by foresters in this country when the 

 trees have been planted in suitable situations and tended with 

 ordinary care The fungus, Nectria cinnabarina, frequently 

 kills young sycamores, and is easily known by the eruption of 

 red, coral-like dots which appear on the dead bark. 



SCOTCH FIR, CORSICAN FIR, CLUSTER FIR, AUSTRIAN 

 FIR, WEYMOUTH PINE. These species are also classed 

 together because the same diseases and enemies are common 

 to them all. Numerous beetles and other insects attack all 

 the species, but the four most feared, although seldom exten- 

 sively destructive in this country, are the fir weevil, Hylobius 

 abietis ; the pine beetle, Hylurgus pineperda; the pine saw- 

 fly, Lophyrus pini ; and the pine geometer moth, Fidonia 

 piniaria. The first is about half-an-inch long, dark-coloured, 

 with dull yellow bands. It begins its ravages in summer, 

 attacking the young shoots and killing or greatly injuring the 

 trees. The pine beetle is very small, slender, and dark. It 

 bores into the young shoots and along the pith, and shoots 

 die and fall off or wither on the tree. The saw-fly devours 

 the leaves in the caterpillar state, denuding the trees com- 

 pletely in bad cases. We have known it attack the Austrian 

 fir badly where the Scotch fir escaped with little damage. 

 This was on a hillside in North Yorkshire. The geometer 

 moth's ravages are similar to those of the saw-fly and are 

 much dreaded in Germany. 



Of fungus that attack the Scotch fir and others named, 

 Agaricus melleus and Trametes radiciperda are the worst. 

 We have had no experience of the last, but the first has been 

 very troublesome on the Wortley estate, where it has caused 

 gaps in young plantations. The presence of the fungus is 

 often not detected till a tree in some spot loses colour, and 

 droops and dies. Another and another follows next to the 

 first one, and so on till in the course of a couple of years or so 

 a complete clearing is made in the plantation. Corsican, 

 Scotch, Austrian firs and larch all went with us at the same 

 spots. The fungus attacks the roots and collar of the tree, 

 and if a slice of bark be removed at the collar the fungus will 

 be seen under the bark enveloping the stem in a sheet of white 

 fungi, and in October and November the stools will be found 



