12 PINACE^. 



the Fir, Larch, and Pine. These insects are at work early in the 

 season, and are enormously productive breeders, each female producing 

 several dozen eggs at a brood, and several successive broods in the 

 course of the season : fortunately, however, they are not of annual 

 occurrence in this country ; and during the last dozen years their 

 numbers seem to have been gradually decreasing ; and it is to be 

 hoped that they will not again visit us in such vast numbers as they 

 did about twenty years ago; when we had legions of them, each indi- 

 vidual of which makes its innumerable punctures upon the young and 

 tender shoots ; thereby causing the sap to ooze out ; retarding circula- 

 tion, producing ulceration, and engendering consumptive or incurable 

 disease amongst many of our fir, but more especially our larch fir 

 plantations. I have found no practical nor effectual means for their 

 destruction, nor for the restoration to health of a tree when it has been 

 seriously affected in its constitution by their ravages ; the best plan is 

 at once to cut such trees down, for if left the chances are that after a 

 few years struggling they come to their death. Where, however, trees 

 are partially injured, by keeping them properly thinned, and clear of 

 dead branches, admitting light and pure air, they may recover. 



The Wood-Beetle :— of this we have several species, but in 

 the case of the firs and pines, the one most to be feared is the fir 

 beetle, pine-weavils as they are sometimes called ; and though 

 related to its congener this species must not be confounded with 

 the Pine-Beetle, inasmuch as it is a very different creature both 

 in its habits of life and modes of working; these, Wood-Beetle 

 class of insects, which are so destructive to firs and pines in the 

 growing state,- — are, I think, engendered, produced, and exist by 

 pine or fir-bark, both in the larva and perfectly matured state, and 

 more particularly when the bark is in an advanced state of decom- 

 position ; and it will be found that it is only when and where there are 

 large quantities of bark-scales, which may have dropped from old trees, 

 or may have been broken off from trees in the process of felling the 

 timber ; or it may be from bark left upon the old stools or branches of 

 a previous crop of fir or pine timber which have not been removed 

 from the ground, or not had length of time to decay; that the ravages 

 of these pests have to be feared; and if to "warn is to arm," then our 

 first stratagem in a war of extermination should be to cut off our 

 enemies' only means of subsistence, i.e., to destroy or remove all 

 decaying or decayed bark ; and wherever it is intended to plant firs or 

 pines upon ground from which a crop of the same trees has been but 



