SPRUCE BUDWORM. 1 5 



'"We next visit Harpswell Neck, and found from our own observation 

 and by inquiry from others that a large proportion of the spruces and 

 firs for a distance of about lo miles have died within about four years. 

 The pleasure of driving over this picturesque road, with its striking 

 northern harsh and wild scenery and frequent glimpses of Casco Bay, 

 in former years greatly enhanced bj'' riding through bits of deep, dark 

 spruce forests, has been not a little marred by the acres and even 

 square miles of dead spruces, stripped of their dark sea-green foliage, 

 reduced to skeletons, and presenting a ghastly, saddening, and de- 

 pressing sight, which border the road. And, indeed, one maj^ travel 

 through the spruce forests of the coast from Portland to Rockland 

 and meet with similar sights. 



"We visited late in August, in company with A. G. Tenney, Esq., the 

 farm of Mr. William Alexander, passing, before reaching the road 

 leading to his house, an area of several acres from which the spruce 

 growth had been cut off in consequence of their widespread destruction 

 by insects. ^Ir. Alexander informed us that the spruce trees were, in 

 his opinon, killed by small caterpillars which have been at work for 

 five years, but which were most destructive in 1879. These caterpillars 

 he described as being the young of a small brown moth which laid its 

 eggs in autumn ; the caterpillars hatching from them were not inch- 

 w^orms, but when fully grown the body tapered towards both ends, and 

 w^ere about three-quarters of an inch long, and were most destructive 

 June 20, when they are seen among the buds at the ends of the branches, 

 where they draw the leaves together, eating the buds and not the leaves. 

 He had also seen borers in the trees, but he thought the death of the 

 tree should be attributed to the bud-worms rather than to the borers. 

 As will be seen further on, a number of caterpillars were found by us 

 late this summer feeding upon leaves of the spruce and fir, but the 

 worm observed by Mr. Alexander was probably one of the leaf-rolling 

 caterpillars, a species of the family Tortricidae. A number of spruces 

 and firs with their leaves still on but of a bright red, were observed 

 scattered along the roadside; but no signs of leaf-worms or borers 

 were observed in such trees, although the dead, leafless trees were 

 infested with bark-borers. 



■'I was informed by the late C. J. Xoyes, Esq., of Brunswick, who 

 was a summer resident at ^lerepoint, that in June and the first week in 

 July, 1878, the spruces and firs were attacked by great numbers of 

 'little measuring worms, like the currant worm in shape', which eat the 

 buds at the ends of the branches ; since 1878 they had mostly disap- 

 peared, and in the summer of 18S1 he had noticed only four or five. 



"From Harpswell Neck we traced dead spruces and firs around to 

 West Bath, where extensive forests had been destroyed and numbers 

 of dead hemlocks were observed, while the wood was attacked and the 

 bark undermined and perforated by Buprestid borers, bark borers, and 

 the pine-weevil (Pissodes sfrobi). We have nowhere seen hemlock 

 trees, which are more exempt than any other coniferous trees from the 

 attacks of insects, so much infested. 



