146 Forty-first Report on the Statjs Museum. 



attack. Sucli insects are currently regarded as being of but little 

 importance, those only which are the source of the evil, which prey 

 upon trees Avhich are healthy and in full vigor, causing them to become 

 sickly and decrepit, being deemed of a character so pernicious as to 

 merit special observation. And yet those insects which only invade 

 dead trees and their timber, are at times occasioning serious losses, 

 showing that they are far from being such trivial evils as we are 

 accustomed to deem them. While this Report is in course of prepara- 

 tion, a casualty occurs in our midst, which furnishes a forcible 

 illustration of the truth of this statement. I allude to the breaking 

 of a railroad bridge over the Sauquoit creek, near Utica, on the 

 morning of May 11, 1858, by which frightful disaster eight persons 

 lost their lives and upwards of fifty others were maimed or injured 

 more or less severely. We are informed by the Utica Morning 

 Herald, in an article prepared immediately after the writer had 

 visited the scene of the catastrophe, that the principal timbers of 

 the bridge, though externally perfectly sound in their appearance, 

 were profusely perforated Avith minute worm holes, whilst alL the 

 interior was so decayed and rotten that the slightest force sufficed to 

 break it into fragments. This fully explains why a structure which 

 had been so recently erected that no suspicions could be reasonably 

 entertained of its being in the least defective and unsafe, was yet in 

 reality fearfully so. Some one of these minute timber-beetles which 

 subsist upon the wood of dead trees, had here its abode, multitudes 

 of them probably mining their burrows everywhere through the 

 interior, as is their habit, and then eating their way out to found new 

 colonies elsewhere. As the little pin-holes which they perforate 

 scarcely diminish the strength of the timber in the heart, they are 

 deemed of no consequence. And yet from every shower that passes, 

 water is admitted through these perforations to the interior of the 

 timber, filling the multitude of little cells which these insects have 

 there excavated, and saturating the wood as though it were a sponge. 

 The outer surface being exposed to the atmosphere speedily dries and 

 thus remains perfectly sound, whilst the interior continuing damp for 

 several days, raj)idly though insiduously decays. Thus the sad dis- 

 aster to which we have alluded, and the destruction of propei'ty and 

 loss of life with which it was attended, there can scarcely be a doubt, 

 was caused by one of those minute insects, which are popularly 

 regarded as being of trifling consequence, since they never attack 

 living trees." 



