NUTMEGS AND MACE 127 



wood-eating beetles attack the dead portions and hasten 

 the decay of the trees. 



I observed that for some reason the beetles only 

 attacked the tree on the side facing the greatest amount 

 of light. As in Penang and Province Wellesley the 

 trees are usually planted on terraced hill slopes, and no 

 shade trees are used, the attack usually takes place on 

 the side of the tree farthest from the hill slope, so that 

 dying trees could be seen to have the bark destroyed in 

 a line on this face, and all the boughs on that side dead. 



The beetles probably breed very fast, as thousands 

 were to be seen in a single tree. 



That this insect was responsible for the catastrophe 

 of 1860, when the cultivation of the nutmeg in Singa- 

 pore was quite destroyed and that of Penang largely 

 diminished, I think there can be little doubt, from 

 Collingwood's description. He writes as follows : 



In the night a tree would be attacked and the morning 

 light would show its topmost branches withered ; the leaves fell 

 off; the disease slowly spread downward, chiefly at one side of 

 the tree (the lower portion often for a long time green and 

 bushy); the tree became one unsightly mass of bare and 

 whitened twigs. No situation was exempt from its ravages, 

 hills and valleys alike suffered, nor could any principle be 

 traced in its promiscuous attacks. Upon a close examination of 

 diseased parts it is found that the formative layer inside the 

 lark dries up and turns black, the leaves then wither and fall 

 off, and soon t he bark is found to be full of small perforations, 

 but no insect of any kind has ever been discovered in connection 

 with the change, nor has any fungus been charged with the 

 destruction. 



I have italicised the passages which seem most 

 strongly to point to the disease and destruction being 

 caused by the Scolytid. 



The death of the tree from the top downwards is 

 very characteristic of destruction caused by deficiency 

 in nutrition due to injury to the roots, or what is 

 equivalent, the ringing or partial ringing of the tree at 

 the base. This is confirmed by the blackening of the 

 cambium layer, which, cut off from the roots by the 



