INSECTS AND FORESTRY—SOME EFFECTS OF THE WAR — 43 
INSECTS AND FORESTRY—SOME EFFECTS 
Oye TNaN es WV aN 
EVERY great war has been responsible for disturbance in 
the animal life of the countries it has traversed, and 
naturalists have often pointed to and still more often 
cuessed at the extent of the disturbance. But in earlier days 
observations were confined to war’s effects upon the larger 
members of a fauna, and it is only now, when naturalists 
have come to study the minutiz of a fauna for its own sake, 
and when the lesser creatures have been invested with 
a new importance on account of their economic significance, 
that we can hope to realise the full depth of the influence, 
direct and indirect, of war upon animal life. Any observa- 
tions which reveal changes due to the Great War are of 
great scientific value and ought to be made and recorded 
now or in the immediate future while the memory of the 
earlier conditions is still fresh and before the inevitable 
readjustment of the fauna has again restored nature to 
its accustomed balance. The Editors need scarcely remind 
Scottish naturalists that they will be glad to consider for 
publication such observations. 
A survey has recently been made of the insects causing 
damage in the forests of the British Isles, and the report, 
by Dr J. W. Munro, is important not only on account of 
its value to forestry, but because it brings into strong relief 
changes, traceable to the war, in an important section 
of the fauna of these islands! We propose to draw 
attention to some of the more marked of these changes 
discovered in Scotland in this Forestry Commission survey 
of thirty-three different areas there. 
How does it come about that a war waged hundreds 
of miles away should have affected the inhabitants of 
Scottish forest areas? Several causes contributed to the 
1 “Survey of Forest Insect Conditions in the British Isles,” 1919, 
by Dr J. W. Munro, Bull. No. 2 of the Forestry Commission, 1920. 
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