ArRiL 25, 1S8S.] 



Garden and Forest. 



lOI 



Fig. 18.— Single 

 Pieiced C»»ne. 



upper branches, which, when heaUhy and unaffected, were 

 purpHsh green and about one and one-quarter inches long, 

 were, for the most part, mined by a rather large Phycid 

 caterpillar. The worm was of the usual shape and color, 

 especially resembling a Phycid caterpillar not uncommon 

 in certain seasons on the twigs of the Pitch Pine, on which 

 it produces large unsightly masses of castings within 

 which the worms hide. 



The Spruce cone worm is usually con- 

 fined to the young cones, into which it 

 bores and mines in different directions, 

 eating galleries passing partly around the 

 interior, separating the scales from the 

 a.xis of the cones (Fig. 18). After mining 

 one cone the caterpillar passes into an 

 adjoining one, spinning a rude silken 

 passage coiniecting the two cones. Some- 

 times a bunch of three or four cones are 

 tied together with silken strands ; while 

 the castings or excrement thrown out of 

 the holes form a large, conspicuous light 

 mass, sometimes half as large as one's fist, out of which 

 the tips of the cones are seen to project (Fig. ly). Besides 

 these unsightly masses of castings, the presence of the 



caterpillars causes an 

 exudation of pitch, 

 which clings in large 

 drops or tears to the 

 outside of the adjacent 

 more or less healthy 

 cones. Where much 

 affected the young 

 cones turn brown and 

 sere. 



The same worms 

 had also attacked the 

 terminal branches and 

 twigs of the same tree, 

 eating oft" the leaves 

 and leaving a mass of 

 excrement on one side 

 of the twig, w i t h i n 

 which they had spun a 

 silken gallery in which 

 the worm lived. 



On removing the 

 bunches of diseased 

 cones to Providence, 

 one caterpillar trans- 

 formed in a warm 

 chamber into a moth, 

 which appeared the 

 end of October; its 

 metamorphosis was 

 probably accelerated by the unusually M-arm aulunnial 

 v/eather then prevailing. All the others had, by the Tst 

 of November, spun within the mass of castings a loose, 

 thin, but tirm, oval cocoon, about half an inch long and 

 a quarter inch wide, hut the larvce had not 

 yet begun to change to chrysalids. Whether 

 in a state of nature they winter over in the 

 larval state within their cocoons, or, as is 

 niore likely, change to pupa; in the autumn, 

 appearing as moths by the end of spring, 

 remains to be seen. 



I only found one tree next to my house 

 thus affected by this worm. In 1887 the 

 tree was not so seriously affected, though 

 its general appearance had not much im- 

 proved. It is probable that in a dense Spruce 

 growth the trees would be less exposed to 

 the attacks of what may prove a serious 

 enemy of shade Spruces. The Obvious remedy Fig. 20.— Spn, 



is, to burn the affected cones and mass of '~""° 



castings late in summer. 



f liitested Colics. 



The foregoing account has been taken from our fourth 

 report on insects injurious to forest and shade trees, in 

 Bulletin No. 13 of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, 

 Division of F'ntomology, to which we are indebted for 

 the accompanying illustrations, drawn by the artist of 

 the Division, Miss L. Sullivan. 



Another cone-eating insect is a bark beetle, Diyoco:les 

 affaber. We have found this beetle in great abundance 

 mining the bark of the Spruce, near the timber line on 

 Gray's Peak, Colorado ; it occurs, however, throughout 

 the northern States. Mr. W. H. Harrington, of Ottawa, 

 Canada, sent us, in December last, a specimen of this 

 beetle (Fig. 21), which he doubtfully referred to this species, 

 and which we iind is identical with our Colorado examples. 

 He has given us the following account of its habits: " The 

 cones of the Pitch Pine were found to be, during the past 

 season (1887), frequently inhabited by this bark borer, 



both beetle and larva. 

 Their attacks were readily 

 noticed by the small ab<jrted 

 cones. The terminal shoots 

 of the branches seemed 

 also sometimes infested by 

 the same beetle. It seems 

 larger than a beetle which 

 I found a few years ago 

 boring into the terminal 

 shoots of the White Pine, and which you determined as 

 D. affaber." A. S. Packard. 



-Motli "t Spruce Cone-worm 

 (enlarged). 



Cone-wo 

 (enlarj^ed). 



Foreign Correspondence. 



The Kew Arboretum. — III. 



BEFORE entering into a detailed account of the more 

 important genera in the Kew Arboretum, it may be 

 well to give a few particulars about some of the finer speci- 

 mens, and a note or two concerning the history of others. 



A fine Persimmon {Diospyros Virginiana) near the Tem- 

 ple of the Sun is one of the original denizens of the Old 

 Arboretum, and was presented with many other rare and 

 curious trees by the Duke of Argyle to George III ; it is a 

 handsome plant — apparently as happy as in its native 

 habitat — and measures upwards of 60 feet in height, the 

 trunk ginhing 5 ft. 4 in. at a yard from the ground ; the 

 head has a spread of about 30 feet. 



A conspicuous object at the present time (March) is a 

 fine specimen of the Constantinople Hazel {Corylus Cohirna) 

 laden with catkins ; it has a spreading head 44 feet across, 

 is 35 feet in height, and the stem measures 4 ft. 3 in. in 

 girth at three feet from the ground. According to Loudon 

 this species was introduced to Britain in 1665 ; the follow- 

 ing memorandum from " Hortus Collinsonianus'' is worth 

 reproducing. " The Turkey Nut, in the Mill Hill Garden, 

 is very remarkable from all others, for the husk rises high, 

 and branches out every wa)'-, and covers the nut This is 

 a remarkable acquisition, for the Captain that brought 

 them from Turkey, eating them in a drinking room, one of 

 them dropped into the crack of a rotten window board, 

 where it took root ; my gardening friend Mr. Bennett, 

 coming there and seeing it, transplanted it to his garden, 

 from whence our tree was a layer, and lirought here anno 

 1756." 



The history of the first introduced plants of the Chili 

 Pine (Araucaria imbricata) is as follows. Towards the 

 very close of the eighteenth century the ofificers of the Van- 

 couver Expedition were at a dinner given in their honor 

 by the Viceroy of Chili. Menzies, the surgeon and natur- 

 alist attached to the Survey, noticing that part of the des- 

 sert consisted of nuts which were new to him, obtained a 

 few Avhich he planted in a box of earth on board his ship. 

 Several germinated and five plants were safely deposited 

 at Kew. These were grown imder glass for many years, 

 and the old Kew plant — perhaps the only survivor — even 

 after being planted in its present position, was protected 



