298 SUMMER. 



generally, they should be grubbed up, trenched pits 

 formed, and larches planted. The insects which at- 

 tack the cambium are chiefly beetles. That which 

 commits the greatest ravages in the pine forests, is the 

 printer beetle, which works its mines in the form of 

 little lozenges, something resembling letters, extending 

 from the hard bark to the hard alburnum, and thus 

 completely destroying the tree. One cannot pass far 

 through a pine forest without seeing the effects of those 

 insects; and there have been instances in which an 

 entire forest has been destroyed in a season, as was- 

 the case with the celebrated pine forest upon the Hartz 

 mountains in Hanover, in the year 1783; and there 

 have been many partial instances in the pine districts 

 of Britain. 



The whole merit of preserving those trees from the 

 destruction of cambium-eroding insects, must not r 

 however, be given to the woodpecker, though unques- 

 tionably the good that it does is very considerable. 

 The tree that we usually find in the act of being at- 

 tacked, is generally that which is sickly and more 

 backward in the development of its buds than the 

 others, and 1783 was a very cold and backward sea- 

 son ; and perhaps it will be found that there is always 

 something in the season which is the cause of all extra- 

 ordinary ravages by insects, and that that might be 

 counteracted by some artificial application to the soil. 

 There is no part of the connection of nature more 

 worthy of study than that, because there is none more 

 immediately productive of practical good. It unfortu- 

 nately happens, however, that the parties who are most 

 interested in, and have the best opportunities of ob- 



