Prof. Peck on Insects which affect Oaks Sf Cherry Trees. 487 



Art. LIII. On Insects which affect Oaks and Cherry 

 Trees. By the late Professor W. D. Peck.* 



Cambridge, U. S. Jan. 30th, 1819. 



It has been observed that America is " the land of insects." 

 This observation is strikingly just as applied to the meridional 

 and tropical parts of this quarter of the globe ; in which these 

 animals are equally remarkable for their numbers, and conspicuous 

 for their magnitude ; but it may, perhaps, be as truly said of a 

 f^reat part of the northern portion of it, where, though much 

 diminished in volume and often very minute, the observer will 

 find them surprisingly copious. These diligent and faithful ser- 

 vants of nature, as Linnaeus calls them, are perpetually engaged 

 in destroying all that is dead, and in checking the increase of all 

 that is living in the vegetable world. In the execution of the 

 task assigned them, they often frustrate the designs and subvert 

 the arrangements of man ; thus constraining him to attend to objects 

 vv'hich are generally deemed beneath his notice, and obliging him 

 to feel how eifective is the smallest instrument in the hand of 

 Omnipotence. 



In this paper it is intended to lay before the Board of Trustees 

 of the Massachusetts Agricultural Society, some notices of two 

 insects, one of which inhabits the forest ; the other is injurious to 

 fruit trees. 



For several years past the ground beneath the black and. white 

 oaks, has been observed to be strewed with small branches of 

 those trees from eighteen inches to two feet in length. Mr. Sullivan 

 assures me he has found them five feet in length, and an inch in 

 diameter. The falling of these branches is occasioned by the 

 larva or grub of an insect which, when its feeding or larva state 

 is nearly complete, eats away the wood in a circular direction, 

 leaving only the bark entire ; this is broken by the first strong 

 breeze, and the branch, with the larva in it, falls to the ground. 

 From this effect of its labours, it may be called the Oak-pruner. 



* From the Massacluisetts Agricultural Repository and Journal, Vol. V. 



