OUR FORESTS 25 



3. Making a Campfire. — Before building a campfire scrape away 

 all inflammable material f rom a spot 10 feet in diameter. Dig a hole 

 in the center and in it build your fire. Keep your fire small. Never 

 build it against trees or logs, or near brush. 



4. Breaking Camp. — Never break camp until your fire is out — 

 dead out — cold. 



5. How To Put Out a Campfire. — Stir the coals while soaking them 

 with water. Turn eharred sticks and drench both sides. Wet the 

 ground around the fire. If you cannot get water, stir in earth and 

 tread it down until it is packed tightly over and around the fire. 

 Be sure the last spark is dead. 



6. Brush Burning. — Never burn slash or brush in windy weather 

 or while there is the slightest danger that the fire will get away. 



Insects 



Insects are constan tly injuring the forest, just as year by year 

 they bring loss to the f arm. Occasionally their ravages attain enor- 

 mous proportions. Conifers are much more likely to suffer seriously 

 from the attacks of insects than are broadleaf trees. This is espe- 

 cially true of some of the pines of the West and South which have 

 been greatly damaged by bark beetles. The western pine beetle is 

 to be found in the ponderosa-pine forests of the Rocky Mountain 

 and Pacific Coast States. It generally attacks the trees in swarms 

 and burrows into the living bark. The female insects excávate gal- 

 leries in the inner layer of bark and deposit their eggs. After the 

 eggs hatch, the larvae in turn bore their way through the bark until 

 they have completed their growth. Their galleries serve to cut oíf the 

 natural movement of the sap and kill the trees by completely 

 girdling them. The larvae then bore into the outer corky bark, 

 where they make little cells in which to transform, first to the pupa 

 and later to the adult stage. The adults work their way out through 

 the bark and fly in swarms to living trees, there to continué their 

 depredations. The southern pine beetle, closely related to the western 

 pine beetle, works in much the same way. It attacks and kills healthy 

 pines of all species occurring within its range, which includes the 

 Southeastern and Gulf States. 



Another extremely bad example of insect attack is that of the 

 gipsy moth, which many years ago became established in New Eng- 

 land. It attacks the oaks and several other broadleaf trees and 

 destroys mixed woodlands if not checked. The introduction into the 

 infested área of the Calosoma beetle and other insect enemies of the 

 gipsy moth has done much to lessen the ravages of this insect. 



FUNGOUS DlSEASES 



Fungi attack the forest in many ways. Some kill the roots of 

 the trees; some grow upward from the ground into the trees and 

 change the sound wood of the trunks to a useless rotten mass. The 

 chestnut bark disease, or chestnut blight has ravaged the native 

 chestnut in this country. It is a parasitic fungus, introduced from 

 Asia on small nursery stock before this country had enacted plant 

 quarantine laws. Its minute spores float through the air and spread 

 the disease. The spores find lodgment in the bark and the fungus 



