10 Joint Bulletin 3 



It was very interesting to note how tame the parent birds were, this 

 of course being caused by the eggs being nearly ready to hatch and the 

 mother bird being anxious to resume her incubating. 



During our visits to this locality, we found a number of red- 

 winged blackbirds' and 25 long-billed marsh-wrens' nests. 



It would be interesting to take a census of the rails and wrens that 

 were nesting in a certain area of this bog. and then estimate the num- 

 ber of nesting rails in the entire swamp. Of course, it would be im- 

 possible to make a very accurate estimate, unless this was done. I 

 won't make the attempt at this time, as I am afraid it might sound 

 exaggerated to readers. 



The coming season I hope to spend more time at this interesting 

 place, and I can assure all bird lovers that their time will be well in- 

 vested if they could visit a colony of rails. 



WHITE PINE BLISTER RUST 



George P. Burns 



Vermont has no finer tree than the white pine but it is today in 

 danger of elimination from the Vermont forests if we are to judge by 

 the experiences of some of the European countries, such as Holland 

 and Russia, where the growing of white pine has been made impossible 

 by the white pine blister rust. In certain regions in Maine, about 85 

 per cent, of the trees are affected and over a third of them are dead 

 from the same trouble. This parasite, introduced into this country in 

 1909, on imported white pine seedlings, attacks the young plants pro- 

 ducing yellow blisters full of powder-like spores. The disease finally 

 kills the tree after a few years although it may remain alive for a long 

 time. Old trees are not as often affected by this rust as are the 

 younger ones. 



The same parasite which causes the blister rust lives part of its 

 life-cycle on the leaves of the currant and gooseberry. Rust spots ap- 

 pear on these plants in May and from them, the disease spreads to the 

 pines. The essential point in blister rust control, therefore, is the 

 eradication of currant and gooseberry bushes in the neighborhood of 

 pines. 



The Vermont department of forestry has tried to control this 

 dangerous pest by watching all the white pine plantations where im- 

 ported seedlings were set out in 1909, and by inspecting all currant 



