98 THIRTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



The damage done in the nursery at Saranac Inn station was insig- 

 nificant in comparison with that in the one at Wawbeek, and will not be 

 considered in this report. 



Early in August, 1907, it was noticed that a few of the seedling trees 

 in the beds of one and two year-old transplants of white and Scotch pine 

 appeared to be dying. Upon examination it was found that each plant 

 had been cut off from one-quarter to one-half an inch below the surface 

 of the ground, and that their roots had completely disappeared. On 

 digging into the ground about these plants a large white grub, about an 

 inch and a half long and as thick as a man's finger, was found. It was 

 often caught in the act of eating the roots of one of the living seedlings 

 immediately adjoining the one or more already destroyed. 



This grub gradually increased in numbers, and with this a correspond- 

 ing increase in the number of young plants destroyed, until about the second 

 week in September. From that time on their depredations became less 

 and less apparent, and ceased entirely during the last week of September. 



Whether this was due to the fact that the majority of the grubs had 

 been dug up and destroyed or that those remaining had, on the approach of 

 cold weather, ceased feeding and had burrowed deeper into the earth to pass 

 the winter in a torpid state, cannot now be determined. The probabilities 

 are that both facts were true. 



The transplant beds were gone over carefully every morning, and 

 wherever freshly-killed plants were found the ground beneath them and 

 beneath all the living plants within a radius of about one foot was dug up 

 to a depth of five inches or more. In that way the grub that did the damage 

 was almost sure to be found, even though it had moved on to attack the 

 roots of an adjoining plant. The uninjured transplants were immediately 

 reset and received no harm from the operation. 



It was easy to discover where the grub had been at work, for the 

 leaves of a pine seedling that had lost its roots would begin to droop within 

 a few hours after the damage was done. A single grub would destroy 

 three or four trees in twenty-four hours. By pursuing the above method 

 a total of 460 grubs were found and destroyed. 



Confining their operations at first to the forty-four beds of one and 

 two year-old transplants of white and Scotch pine, later on a few invaded 



