VIII. 6 

 TIMBER TRANSPORTERS 



TIMBER has been a staple import to Scotland for many 

 centuries, since long before those days in the reign of 

 James VI when the prohibition of Danish timber threatened 

 to stop house-building throughout the country. It is little 

 wonder then that animals brought from Europe in the early 

 days of the trade, finding the new climate congenial, should, 

 having become established, so spread that they are now 

 indistinguishably part and parcel of our fauna. 



LONG ESTABLISHED WOOD-WASPS 



So, I imagine, it has been with the Wood- Wasps, the 

 Greater, Sirex gigcts, and the Steel- Blue, Sirex noctilio. 

 They are common on the Continent, and are ever and again 

 turning up in imported wood, for within tree trunks the female 

 lays her eggs, using in the process a long stout sting-like 

 ovipositor, which has earned the group the American name 

 of "horn-tails," and is the cause of much needless alarm 

 among the unsophisticated discoverers of these fine insects. 

 Within the tree the larvae grow and feed for two years, 

 before emerging as adults in the warm days of summer. 

 In many fir woods throughout Scotland, the Greater Wood- 

 Wasp seems to have become permanently established, and 

 the tunnelling larvae do serious damage to the trees, 

 especially of Scots Pine and Silver Fir. The Steel-Blue 

 Wood-Wasp is less common, though it also is held to be 

 destructive amongst conifers, in particular Spruce and Larch. 

 So much at home do the two British species of Wood-Wasps 

 appear to be that some naturalists have regarded them as 

 aboriginal natives of this country. It is next to impossible 

 at this date to prove the former absence of insignificant 

 creatures, where they have been introduced by chance and 

 are long established, but it is tolerably certain that the 



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