144 



Forty-first Report on the State Museum. 



.'.M 



hemlock. It probably will not prove to be a destructive species, as 

 the group to which it belongs have their habitat under dead bark. 



Pissodes strobi is the notorious white- 

 pine weevil, the larvae of which inflict 

 such serious injuries on young pines by 

 infesting and destroying the topmost 

 shoot, checking its upward growth and 

 causing an unsightly bend at this point, 

 as future upward growth can be con- 

 FiG. 6. — The white-pine weevil, tinned only through one of the lateral 

 Pissodes sTEOBi ; a, its larva ; 6, the shoots. The beauty of the trees and 

 pupa. their value for commercial purposes are 



thereby greatly impaired. The operations of this beetle do not, how- 

 ever, prove as serious to the hemlock as to the pine, seldom producing 

 deformation in it. 



In the Annual Report of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture for 1885, plate 

 ix, from which the figures illustrating this 

 insect and its operations are taken, also gives 

 representations of remarkable deformations 

 produced in white pines through the custom- 

 ary destruction of the terminal shoots by this 

 insect attack. Figure 6 shows the beetle, its 

 larva and the pupa. In Figure 7, the larval 

 burrows in the sap-wood and in the heart- 

 wood are represented at a; and in b the 

 pupa-cases or cocoons beneath the bark 

 removed, and the interior burrows in the 

 heart-wood, are shown. 



Grypturgus atomus, the smallest known beetle 

 among the Scolytid beetles, was found by 

 Dr. Packard in considerable numbers in and 

 under the bark of standing dead hemlocks in 

 Maine. It has also been observed in the 

 same situation in pines, in Canada, New York 

 and Massachusetts. It is especially destruc- 

 tive to spruces, as it burrows the bark irreg- 

 ularly, and not in the plane of the sap-wood. 

 Its galleries are very numerous, a great many 

 being contained within a square inch of 

 extent. 



Of the two Hemipterous insects recorded as infesting the hemlock 

 (there are probably several other species of the order which have been 



kz^ 



Fig. 7.— Twigs showing bur- 

 rows and cocoons of Pissodes 



STEOBI. 



