348 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 340. 



but, on the contrary, it reiterates that it conceives the reserva- 

 tions made for the purpose of their rational use under re- 

 strictions and control apart from private interests in expecta- 

 tion of possible occupancy. If uncared for by the rightful 

 owner, the Government, the door is opened to greater de- 

 struction and depredation than before. We, therefore, desire 

 to impress upon our Representatives in Congress the imme- 

 diate necessity of making provisions for the better care of the 

 public timber and other resources, as urged heretofore by this 

 association. 



We give below portions of two papers read on this 

 occasion, and we shall continue the report in next week's 

 issue. 



THE RELATIONS OF INSECTS AND BIRDS TO PRESENT FOREST- 

 CONDITIONS. 



A paper on this subject was read by A. D. Hopkins, Ento- 

 mologist of the West Virginia Experiment Station, from which 

 we have taken the following extracts : 



Forests under natural conditions, or, in other words, those 

 unaffected by the advent of civilization, appear to be under the 

 control of certain laws of nature, which govern the vegetable 

 and animal species therein in such a manner that a harmo- 

 nious balance is usually preserved. No species of the vege- 

 table kingdom is allowed to suffer severely from the undue 

 increase of its enemies in the animal kingdom. Few, if any, 

 species of the animal kingdom become extinct on account of 

 the failure of their food, or from the attack of their natural 

 enemies. A continued battle of the species exists, but it is a 

 war in which none are conquered, and none are conquerors ; 

 each species fighting for its existence makes possible the ex- 

 istence of some other species, and thus a balance is preserved. 



This may be the rule under natural conditions, and all may 

 go well until the unnatural conditions following the advent of 

 civilization bring about a change. Then nature's laws are 

 broken, obscure species of insects and plants come to the 

 front ; others which were formerly abundant disappear. In 

 the confusion certain enemies of plants are for a time exempt 

 from the attack of their enemies, and are left free to commit 

 ravages upon some species of vegetation ; others, from a lack 

 of a sufficient supply of their natural food, change their habits 

 and infest plants of an entirely different character, and thus 

 escape for a time their enemies, which had previously kept 

 them within proper bounds ; others are introduced from 

 foreign countries, and their enemies have been left behind. 

 They invade our forests unmolested, except by man, until 

 some of their old enemies are introduced, or they acquire 

 new ones here. 



When the process of clearing the land commences, new con- 

 ditions are presented to the forest-insects which are most 

 favorable to their increase. The girdled trees in clearings, the 

 logs, stumps and tops, and the injuries to standing timber by 

 fire, all contribute to their multiplication, some of them 

 changing their habits from that of infesting diseased and dead 

 timber to that of attacking the living, and through their power 

 in numbers they are enabled to kill trees on their own 

 account. 



Some ten years ago, when the West Virginia Central and 

 Pittsburgh Railroad was being built through a portion of the 

 Spruce-forests in our state, the timber along the line com- 

 menced to die from the attack of insects, and the trouble con- 

 tinued to increase and spread during the next three years until 

 thousands of acres of the finest timber in this state was killed. 

 Only four vears ago an invasion of the destructive pine-bark 

 beetle, starting somewhere near the line between West Vir- 

 ginia and Virginia, -in Rockingham or Hampshire counties, 

 spread like a conflagration over these two states and adjoining 

 states wherever the Pine grew. The Pine timber on hundreds 

 of square miles was killed, causing a loss of property having 

 a value of more than a million and a half dollars. Similar 

 devastations have taken place in Maine, New York and New 

 Brunswick, and in the forests of Germany and France. Most, 

 if not all, of these destructive invasions were occasioned by 

 unnatural conditions brought about through the influence of 

 man. 



Never was there a better time to study the intimate relations 

 of forest-tree insects to certain forest-conditions. Neither can 

 there be a better time to obtain knowledge of the characters 

 and habits of forest-tree insects, with a view of utilizing this 

 knowledge in the future system of forest-management, which 

 must necessarily follow this age of forest-destruction. 



Few persons realize the importance of this line of research 

 and the benefits it is possible to derive from a more complete 

 knowledge of the subject. The benefits to be derived from 

 cutting timber at certain times of the year to prevent the at- 



tack of destructive wood-infesting insects ; the saving of the 

 valuable timber by removing the bark from logs at certain 

 times in the year to protect the wood from insect injuries ; the 

 possibilities to be derived from the introduction from other 

 countries of parasitic and predacious species to keep in check 

 our most destructive kinds ; the advantage to be gained from 

 a better knowledge of the favorable and unfavorable condi- 

 tions for the existence of insect pests and of nature's laws in 

 the control of her species — these are examples of some of the 

 lines of work which are worthy of a life-time devotion of many 

 specialists. 



With reference to the relation of birds to certain forest con- 

 ditions, I realize that I will be trespassing upon a sacred faith 

 among our people, that birds are great friends as insect de- 

 stroyers, when I say that, from my own observations, they 

 have very little, if any, ultimately beneficial influences in the 

 prevention of insect depredations in our forests, however use- 

 ful they may be against other insects. That insectiverous 

 birds obtain the larger share of their food from the insect 

 world, and that they devour immense numbers of insects and 

 other small forms of animal life, no one can doubt. They are 

 not, however, our friends to the extent that they will devour 

 those only which we look upon as injurious. In truth, they 

 make no choice between those which are beneficial and those 

 which are injurious. They capture alike the parasites of the 

 injurious species, the parasite of the parasite, as well as the 

 injurious species. They merely take the food nature has pro- 

 vided from the ranks of the insect armies of opposing forces, 

 and neither one force or the other thereby gains an advantage. 

 The birds merely fulfill their mission in the economies of 

 nature by exerting their influence in the mutual struggle for 

 existence of animal and vegetable species. 



Woodpeckers, which are generally recognized as exercising 

 the greatest benefit to mankind in the destruction of wood- 

 infesting insects, are not so useful as we have been led to sup- 

 pose. This fact was brought home to me while making in- 

 vestigations with reference to beneficial forest-tree insects in 

 Germany in 1892, where I was seeking for an enemy to intro- 

 duce against our destructive bark beetles. I determined that 

 a certain species of Clerid beetle was by far the greatest enemy 

 of European bark beetles, and was successful in finding a 

 forest in which they were common. I was surprised, however, 

 to find that the woodpeckers were the greatest enemy of the 

 Clerid. The larva?, pupse and adults of this helpful insect had 

 occurred in great numbers in the bark of small Pine-trees that 

 had been broken by snow the previous winter. They had de- 

 stroyed most of the bark beetles which had infested these 

 trees, and had gone into the outer bark near the base of the 

 tree to make their cocoons in which to pass the winter. It was 

 in those trees only which had escaped the attack of wood- 

 peckers that I succeeded in obtaining specimens. In some 

 places not one infested tree in twenty had escaped the birds, 

 and in those which they had attacked apparently not one Clerid 

 in one hundred had escaped them. This observation led to sub- 

 sequent investigation of the habits of woodpeckers, and it has 

 been determined that they do not peck holes in the bark of 

 healthy-growing trees (a common habit with some species) to 

 obtain insects, but for the purpose of securing the inner bark 

 and sap for food. I have seen trees that had died on account of 

 the quantity of bark that had thus been removed. I have re- 

 cently discovered that an injury to the outer sap wood, caused by 

 them while thus engaged, results in a common and quite serious 

 defect in the wood of different kinds of trees. I have also 

 determined that what is known as curly poplar, a curled and 

 wavy condition occurring in the wood of Tulip-trees, is the 

 result of the punctures in the bark made by these birds. 



ECONOMIES IN RAILWAY-TIES. 



In a most instructive paper on this subject Mr. E. E. Russell 

 Tratman, of the Engineering News, stated that an average of 

 one hundred railroad-ties is obtained from an acre of forest, 

 so that twenty-six and a half acres must be cleared to supply 

 2,640 ties, the number necessary for one mile of new track. 

 To this should be added three and a half acres for ties for 

 renewal for each mile of road. To insure a permanent sup- 

 ply at this rate of consumption there should be maintained 1 13 

 acres of growing timber to each mile of track. The total length 

 of railroad tracks in the United States is about 230,000 miles, 

 and with an average of 2,500 ties per mile, 575,000,000 ties are 

 in use, while 75,000,000 to 90,000,000 of ties are annually used 

 for construction and for renewals. For ties and sawed timber 

 for bridges and trestles 500,000.000 cubic feet of round timber 

 are used. This is exclusive of timber used for telegraph-poles, 

 station-buildings, fences, cars and other railroad uses. This 

 consumption represents but a part of the total annual timber- 

 crop and reduction of timber resources due to reckless and 



