240 WEST VIRGINIA EXPERIMENT STATION 



the base and the remainder sound; or in other cases logs are 

 cut out of dead trees that are sound at both ends and decayed 

 in the middle. It had been observed by the operators that 

 deadened trees and those killed by fire, as well as many that 

 had died during the epidemic of 1883 to 1886, remained sound 

 for many years, but that the majority of those which had died 

 during recent years were the ones that were the worst affected 

 by decay. 



A number of logs taken from dead trees were sawen into lum- 

 ber at the Blackwater Lumber Co.'s mill at Davis, in order to 

 show me the character of the trouble. Part of these logs were 

 as sound and good for lumber as if they had been cut from liv- 

 ing trees, while in other portions, the sap and heartwood were 

 in an advanced stage of decay, thus rendering the entire log 

 worthless for lumber. While I was talking to the superintend- 

 ent and watching the operation of the mill, I observed that a 

 log from a living tree was also affected by a kind of dry rot 

 throughout the heartwood in one section of the log, the decayed 

 portion being surrounded by a thin rim of living sapwood. 

 This gave me a clue to the cause of at least one character of 

 the trouble, but there appeared to ,be at least two distinct 

 kinds of decay, one developing in the sapwood and extending 

 into the heartwood ; the other developing in the heartwood of 

 living trees and -not affecting the living sapwood, I therefore 

 continued the investigation to determine, if possible, the prime 

 cause and the extent and distribution of each. I soon found 

 some dead trees that showed eyidence of having died within 

 the past two years, and instead of the usual characteristic work 

 of the common spruce bark beetle in the bark, I found the 

 work of bark and sapwood borers (round and flat-headed grubs.) 

 The character of work of these borers, the absence of bark 

 beetles, and the recent death of the trees, indicated at once 

 that they were serious enemies both of the living trees and the 

 wood of the dead ones. Further search revealed the fact that 

 the timber in this section of the forest had not, as a rule, died 

 in large patches of one to one hundred or more acres, as was 



