Report of the Forest Commission. 129 



Some claimed that this premature decay was due to the agita- 

 tion of the trees by high winds, but the blight attacked also the 

 timber standing in sheltered and protected situations. 



It was suggested that the evil might have been due to a hard 

 winter, to some period of intense cold, or to some late and severe 

 frost occurring after the sap had started in its vernal flow ; but 

 there is no record of any such unusual weather, and no reason 

 why all the other species, some of them closely allied to the 

 spruce, should not have been injured by the same cause. 



Others, including dendrologists as well as woodsmen, held 

 stoutly to the theory that the spruce was a short-lived species, 

 and that the trees died of old age. There was home ground for 

 this theory in the fact that the smaller trees — those under 12 

 inches in diameter or thereabouts — were uninjured. But, in 

 reply, it has been shown that the spruce is not a short-lived tree ; 

 that it is a hardy species which resists the extremes of altitude 

 and latitude ; that, where it grows subject to natural forest con- 

 ditions, it is the slowest in growth of all the native trees of our 

 State, and that there are live spruces standing in the Adirondacks 

 which are nearly four centuries old. Spruces of equal diameters 

 often vary 100 years in age, owing to difference in environment. 

 But these trees died in masses or clumps, the same as when scat- 

 tered, irrespective of the fact that, though of equal size, they 

 differed a century or more in age. If the trees which died had 

 all been planted at the same time, were all of the same size, 

 diameter and age, and, furthermore, the limit of maturity had 

 been ascertained and determined, then the theory of death from 

 old age might be entertained. 



In view of the prevalence of insect blight elsewhere it seems 

 strange that this cause should have been overlooked or summar- 

 ily dismissed without consideration. Some investigators asserted 

 that they had looked carefully for insects, both on the leaves and 

 under the bark, and failed to find any. This proves nothing, 

 however ; the entomologists found them when they took up the 

 investigation. 



From statements made by Mr. Peck, the State Botanist, who 



first discovered the insect at work, and reports of entomologists 



whose observations justify his conclusions, there seems to be 



good ground for attributing the death of the Adirondack spruces 



17 



