MOUNTAIN TREES 



tree with the same diameter will often 

 run upwards over a hundred and fifty 

 feet, and the tree has leaves and 

 branches to support besides its own 

 trunk. It is said that a rye plant will 

 support a stem that is 500 times its di- 

 ameter. 



There is a beetle, a portion of whose 

 life history is intimately bound up with 

 the dying days of many of the forest 

 trees. This is the big Pine Borer, 

 Prionus calif ornicus, who is responsible 

 for the big holes and tunnels in the dead 

 and fallen logs of the pines and firs. The 

 adult forms are familiar sights at night 

 about mountain resorts. They fly into 

 open doors and windows, annoucing 

 their arrival by a great clattering of 

 wings. The curious who try to pick 

 them up find that the big, brown-bodied, 

 long-horned creatures are possessed of 

 powerful, vicious, incurved mandibles 

 capable of inflicting painful wounds. 

 The rasping noise made when they are 

 disturbed is made by rubbing the tibial 



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