14 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I913. 



six weeks boiling the sea water with fuel thus obtained, in order to 

 make salt. This was during the embargo which led to the war of 1812 

 with Great Britain. It is interesting to note that the budworm in 1878 

 appeared on the same farm on which the spruces had been destroyed by 

 a worm in 1807, or about 80 years previously." 



Of course we do not know that the insect referred to in the 

 foregoing account is the spruce budworm, but it is extremely 

 probable. The first authentic knowledge we have of this species 

 came with a publication of the technical description in 1865 by 

 Air. Brackenridge Cleinens of Easton, Pa., who described it from 

 specimens received from Virginia. In 1869 AI!r. C. T. Robin- 

 son redescribed a brown variety under the name Tortrix niari- 

 dia believing it to be an undescribed species. The specimens 

 were obtained from Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. " 



It was not until the late seventies and early eighties that the 

 insect again came into prominence because of the great damage 

 it caused to the spruces along the coast of southwestern Maine. 

 Professor A. S. Packard in the Fifth Report of the Entomo- 

 logical Commission (1890) gives us an excellent account of this 

 outbreak and we can do no better than quoting from his work. 



" From inquiries and field work carried on in June 



and July 1883, in different parts of Maine, we have little doubt but that 

 the destruction of spruces and firs along the coast of the State was 

 mainly due to the attacks of this insect. 



"The different climatic causes alleged to destroy forest trees in 

 general, would, in the present case, have injured pines and hardwood 

 trees as well as spruces and firs, and the destruction would have been 

 general ; whereas the trees have been killed by a caterpillar which is 

 not known to live upon pines nor any trees but spruce, fir, and occa- 

 sionally the hemlock and larch. Individual trees, or clumps of trees, 

 were attacked, whether in high and exposed situations or in hollows ; 

 occasionally from such centers the worms seem to have increased and 

 spread from year to year, until all the trees in localities several square 

 miles in extent were killed. Moreover, as we have seen in the case of 

 the attacks of larch worms, the defoliation of spruces and firs repeated 

 two and perhaps three summers is sufficient to either kill the tree out- 

 right, or so weaken it that bark-boring beetles can complete the work 

 of destruction. We are now inclined to the opinion, then, that the Bud 

 Tortrix is the sole or at least the main cause of the destruction of 

 spruces and firs in Cumberland, Sagadahoc and Lincoln Counties, Me., 

 and that by their attacks they render the trees liable to invasion by 

 hosts of bark beetles. 



