than an equally great or even greater one, to which one has be- 

 come accustomed, by long association. It is indeed very doubt- 

 ful if the blister rust is as important an enemy to the production 

 of white pine timber as is the pine weevil. 



The adult of the white pine weevil is a small brown beetle, 

 about a quarter of an inch long, with two gray or band-like 

 markings across each hard, shell-like wing cover. It differs 

 from the more ordinary beetles in the possession of a long snout- 

 like extension of the head equal to about one-fourth of the body 

 length. The insect usually passes the winter in the adult con- 

 dition and leaves its hibernation quarters early in the spring 

 and immediately flies to young pine trees. Here the female 

 seeks the terminal shoot or leader of a tree and places her eggs 

 under the bark of that part of the leader produced the preced- 

 ing year. This she accomplishes by excavating a number of 

 shallow pits in the bark with her biting jaws which are at the 

 end of the snout, and by then reversing her body and placing 

 her eggs in these cavities from the end of her abdomen. Wher- 

 ever the leader is injured in this manner droplets of pitch are 

 exuded which soon harden, and thus indicate the leaders in 

 which eggs have been oviposited. The depositing of eggs begins 

 with the first few warm days of spring usually during April 

 and continue actively for several weeks or a month. The exact 

 season of egg-laying cannot be stated, as this varies with the 

 locality, and in the same locality varies with the advancement of 

 the season. Some egg-laying may occur as late as the latter part 

 of June, but it is usually mostly completed by the middle of May. 



The eggs usually hatch within a period of eight or ten days, 

 each producing a small white larva or grub, which feeds voraci- 

 ously under the bark of the terminal shoot, eating the cambium, 

 the essential growth producing portion of the tree. Usually 

 the eggs are deposited in the upper part of the last year 's growth 

 and the grubs work downward, destroying the entire inner bark 

 and completely killing the tissue as they proceed. As they be- 

 come larger, the larvae eat deeper and deeper into the surface 

 of the sapwood and finally, in their last larval stage when they 

 have reached about their full growth, they burrow into the wood, 

 usually in the lower part of a terminal shoot. There they con- 

 struct small oval chambers about one- third of an inch long, 

 which are covered with partially chewed up bits of wood, known 



