1222 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



sound trees, while other species do so wholly to dead 

 or dying ones, or to fallen trunks of them in the forests 

 and elsewhere. Then the roots of forest trees also have 

 their special enemies, while others destroy the bark. 



In so far as forest trees are concerned, perhaps the 

 most destructive insects are the bark beetles, of which 

 there are quite a large number of species. These beetles 

 have, in times past, utterly destroyed forest trees cover- 

 ing hundreds of square miles, and they are committing the 

 same depredations at the present time. They bore 

 through the bark of pine, spruce, hickory, fir, and other 

 trees — full-grown, healthy trees — and subsequently com- 

 pletely girdle their main 



trunks, which 

 kills the tree 



ultimately 

 so preyed 

 upon. 



In passing through the 

 vast pine forests of the 

 Southern States, as the 

 writer has frequently done, 

 one may plainly see the 

 fearful devastation wrought 

 by the various invasions of 

 the common pine beetle of 

 the South. Hundreds of 

 square miles of dead pine 

 and spruce trees may be 

 seen in various stages of 

 decay, the death having 

 been caused by this pest. 

 We may even observe the 

 same class of destruction 

 in its various stages in cer- 

 tain areas within the Dis- 

 trict of Columbia. Great 

 quantities of useful timber 

 have thus been lost to the 

 country and the industries ; 

 while we may note simi- 

 lar destructive work in 

 progress, and at all stages, 

 due to the operations of 

 the spruce beetle in the 

 forests of those trees in 

 northeastern United States 



Fig. 4. ONE OF THE OLDEST BLACK WALNUT TREES IN THE 

 ENVIRONS OF WASHINGTON, AND ONE THAT HAS PROBABLY 

 SEEN FIFTY SUMMERS COME AND GO 



Trees succumb from all sorts of causes. Old age has overtaken this one; 

 but it has also been struck by lightning; partly strangled by vines; fur- 

 nished food for thousands of larvae, and weathered the gales of half a 

 century. 



and southeastern Canada. 



"This species," says Doctor Hopkins, "caused the death 

 of a very large percentage of the mature spruce over an 

 area of thousands of square miles. In the aggregate 

 many billions of feet of the best timber were destroyed. 

 The large areas of this dead timber furnished fuel for 

 devastating forest fires, with the result that in most 

 cases there was a total loss." 



More particulars on this vitally important subject will 

 be brought out in future issues of American Forestry, 

 as well as observations on the destruction now in progress 

 in our North American forests due to the attacks of other 

 species of insects and their larvae in still other regions. 



Passing from these few introductory remarks on for- 

 est beetles to moths, we enter upon one of the most 



attractive fields of inquiry and observation in the entire 

 realm of biology. As in the case of all the biological 

 sciences, it has its large literature, illustrated by thou- 

 sands upon thousands of plain and exquisitely colored 

 figures ; while upon the other hand there is the entire 

 world of nature ever standing open to the investigator 

 for the verification of all that is set forth in that litera- 

 ture, and offering at the same time no end of new 

 material for study and description. All this is equally 

 true of the butterflies — a group so closely allied to the 

 moths that they appear to almost run into each other. 

 Now, in a great many instances, the larva? of caterpillars 



of both moths and butter- 

 flies feed upon the leaves 

 of trees of many descrip- 

 tions, those of our forests 

 as well as the shade trees 

 of our towns and cities. 

 These insects may be 

 studied with a great many 

 objects in view; but this 

 field is so extensive that to 

 enter upon it in any satis- 

 factory manner would re- 

 sult in the presentation of 

 material far exceeding the 

 limitations of the space at 

 our command in the pres- 

 ent connection. However, 

 such information will be 

 forthcoming from time to 

 time, while right here it is 

 proposed to briefly intro- 

 duce one of the very hand- 

 somest moths in our insect 

 fauna. This is the Regal 

 or Royal Walnut moth, 

 atheroma regalis of Fab- 

 ricius (Figs. 2 and 3). Its 

 caterpillar is a most re- 

 markable looking creature, 

 and it is here shown life- 

 size in Figure 1. A sum- 

 mer or two ago, Mrs. Bert 

 S. Elliott, of Washington, D. C, was good enough to 

 furnish me with more than a dozen living specimens of 

 this grand larva of our Regal moth, they being trans- 

 ported on a big limb of a sycamore tree, bearing a great 

 quantity of fresh leaves, which latter constitutes one 

 of their foods in nature. In a reproduced photograph, 

 this caterpillar is a rather tame-looking affair as compared 

 with the living animal. To appreciate this, one must 

 indeed see it in life, with its shiny, pea-green body, orna- 

 mented on the sides by an interrupted series of black and 

 white markings ; its red head and tail-plates ; red and 

 black feet, and its remarkable, double pair of curved, 

 red and black horns on the segments just back of the 

 head. Smaller horns, too, are seen elsewhere on the body, 

 as shown in the cut. Country boys call this catterpillar 



