Entomological Society. 7223 



things have occurred to call me away from home, and I have not been able to make 

 much investigation, until within the last few days, into the ravages of the insect. 



" I find that although well known to the working foresters with wh:nn I have con- 

 versed, the insect has attracted little attention from proprietors of woodlands and 

 country gentlemen, 



" The larch is known to be failing throughout Scotland, and I believe throughout 

 Britain ; and much speculation exists as to the cause or causes. The Scottish Arbo- 

 ricultural Society, instituted in 1854, offered a prize in 1857 for the best essay on the 

 causes of decay in the larch (' On the Dry Rot and other diseases in Larch and 

 Spruce'), and in the volume of their ' Transactions' for the current year I find a short 

 paper by James MoNeoll, forester, of Abercairney, Crieff, which makes no mention of 

 the Hylobius as a primary agent of destruction, but dwells largely on the physiological 

 conditions required for a healthy plantation, and observes, incidentally, that the plants 

 in crowded plantations become sickly and etiolated, and thus ' the languid circulation 

 of the tree in summer invites the attacks of a species of beetle, whose ravages destroy 

 the foliage, thus impairing the wood-producing foliage or power of assimilation.' — P. 8. 

 " Brown, in the ' Forester,' second edition, 1849, does not notice the beetle at all, 

 but in the most receut work I can find on the subject, intituled ' The Larch Disease,' by 

 Charles Mcintosh, Blackwood, 1860, it is mentioned, among ' the accidental misfortunes 

 the larch is liable to,' as evidently a very minor cause of the mischief so extensively pre- 

 vailing in larch plantations, but its operations are limited ' to attacks on newly- 

 planted larch, or such as are sickly.'— P. 113. 



" The main causes of decay, according to these authorities, are: — 

 " 1. The employment of bad seed, the produce of sickly or unhealthy trees. The 

 larch appears to have been indiscriminately and very extensively planted on all kinds 

 of soil. Many of these, particularly rich low-lying soils and undrained wet lands, are 

 uncongenial to the nature of the tree, and the plantations have failed more or less ac- 

 cordingly, exhibiting what is called ' dry rot or decay at the heart.' It seems to be a 

 fact that unhealthy trees produce a larger crop of cones than sound ones, and hence 

 much bad seed has been gathered and distributed. 



"2. Plantations on the old redsand-stone formation invariably fail ; and this rock is 

 very prevalent in Scotland. 



" 3. Plantations of larch on ground previously occupied by other coniferous trees, 

 or indeed any trees, also fail. 



"There is no doubt that larch timber has been much infected by what the foresters 

 call ' dry rot ' or decay at the heart, and probably the use of low, or rich, or wet soils 

 may have been the occasion of this. I am also prepared to admit that mischief may 

 have resulted from the employment of morbid seed. But I believe the attacks of this 

 beetle have had far more to do with the destruction of trees than has hitherto been sus- 

 pected. My present forester, a native of Sutherlandshire, says he has been familiar 

 with the attacks of the beetle in the north for the last ten years. It has certainly been 

 unknown in the south, where I now am, until within two or three years, and now it is 

 swarming in every weed. Six years ago, when on a visit from India to my father-in-law 

 in Ayrshire, the Hylobius was pointed out to me by the old forester at Blairquhan as 

 a recent scourge which had just made its appearance. It appears, therefore, to have 

 travelled from the north gradually towards the south. Several persons here whose 

 attention I have drawn to the subject, and who have consequently directed observation 

 more carefully to the matter, have been struck with the extent of the damage inflicted 



