i28 OBSERVATIONS ON BLIGHT. 



certain and inevitable death ;— and I have been sorry to observe, 

 whilst staying a few days in London, that its increase, parti- 

 cularly among elm-trees, is so rapid, that in thirty years' time, 

 if its devastations continue, there will not be an elm left stand- 

 ing any where round the metropolis. In Kensington Gardens, 

 Hyde Park, and St. James's Park, the elms are beginning to 

 feel its power, but to the south of the city its ravages are 

 frightful. In Greenwich Park the noblest trees are dying 

 every year, and Camberwell Grove has nearly ceased to be a 

 grove. The beetle^ is brownish black, and in shape something 

 like the great dung-chafer," but is not more than an eighth of 

 an inch in length ; the females may be seen flying round the 

 stems of the finest elm-trees in the sun-shine, like little bees. 

 Where this is once seen the tree may as well be cut down, 

 and the timber saved, for in two years the tree will be dead, 

 and the timber good for little or nothing. Each female beetle 

 bores a hole through the bark directly to the solid wood, and 

 there deposits a cluster of from twenty to forty eggs ; these 

 hatch, and become little white maggots, which, by common 

 consent, diverge like rays from the centre of a circle, and feed 

 on the bark just where it touches the solid wood ; guided by a 

 singular instinct, they never cross each other's tracks, but go 

 straight forward, without turning right or left ; thus all con- 

 nexion between the bark and the wood of the tree is destroyed, 

 and their mutual offices lost to each ; — the death of the tree is 

 the sure and natural consequence. When each maggot has 

 gnawed himself a gully about three inches long, he stops, 

 turns to a chrysalis, then to a beetle, then gnaws a straight 

 hole through the bark, comes out, and flies away in quest of a 

 partner. The fir has a beetle very similar, peculiar to itself; 

 it is quite black, rather longer, and much narrower.'^ 



Now, as these little rogues breed by millions in a tree 

 which they have once attacked, and much prefer them to fresh 

 vigorous trees, I would recommend all owners of such pro- 

 perty to cut down any tree directly he perceives, by the round 

 shot-holes in the bark, that the attack has been commenced ; 

 convert the timber and burn the bark : this done in winter, 

 when all are quietly housed in the bark, and no stragglers are 



' Scolytus destructor. — Ed. s Geotrupes sfercorarius. — Ed. 



^ Hylurgus piniperda. — Ed. 



