THE PINE INVESTIGATION. 283 



Va., when I was there in March, 1891, conducting investiga- 

 tions in the spruce forests. In the course of a conversation 

 with this gentleman in regard to the trouble that had affected 

 the spruce, he remarked that he was convinced that my con- 

 clusions were correct with reference to the spruce having been 

 killed by insects, since he had observed, while traveling through 

 Bath and Highland counties, Virginia, in the summer of 1890, 

 that the pine on the western slope of the Warm Springs and 

 Jackson river mountains was dying as if killed by fire, and 

 upon closer examination no fire or other external injury was 

 observed, but the living bark was found to be infested with 

 great numbers of little black bugs and small white worms, 

 which he concluded must have caused the death of the trees. 

 Capt. Parsons stated that this dying condition of the pine ex- 

 tended for a distance of seventy miles along the western slopes 

 of these mountain ranges. 



I was anxious to investigate this matter, thinking it would 

 throw some light upon the cause of the death of the spruce, but 

 the trouble being in another State, I could not do so. 



FIRST OBSERVATIONS. 



During an extended journey through the State in July, 1891, 

 I visited Hampshire county on July 12th, with the hope that I 

 would find some indications of the trouble in the pine forests 

 there. 1 had but one day and night to spend there, however, 

 and necessarily could not accomplish much. I procured a 

 horse and buggy and drove out some five or six miles from 

 'Romney, where 1 was fortunate in finding a group of five dead 

 pine trees. They were some distance from the road on a steep 

 mountain side, but 1 managed to get to them, and made a 

 hurried examination. The trees were found to have been dead 

 some time, possibly three or four months. A brood of bark 

 beetles had emerged from the bark on the upper portion of the 

 trunks, and the bark was dead and readily separated from the 

 wood. No living examples of the insects that had bred in the 

 upper bark were found, but numerous dead examples of the 

 parent beetles, (Dendroctonus frontalis) were taken from the old 



