56 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
But the most numerous, if not the most fatal of the enemies 
of the pines, are the various kinds of borers which infest the 
trunk, on the wood of which they subsist. Two species of 
Urocerus, or horn-tail, neither of them common, (the aldicornis 
and abdominalis ; ib. 391—2), are found on the pines. They 
bore long holes in the trunk. The grubs of the one-colored 
Prionus, (Prionus unicolor, ib. 80), a large beetle, are also found 
in the same trees. Several beetles of the genus Callidiwm, live, 
while in the grub state, in the trunk of pines and firs or in the 
timber of these trees. One of them, (Callidiuwm bajulus, ib. 83), 
which is found in “fir, spruce and hemlock wood and lumber,” 
is supposed to have been introduced from Europe. Of the Bu- 
prestian beetles, the larve of which are wood-borers and eaters, 
and several of which are particularly fond of pines, the largest 
is the Virgmian (Buprestis Virginica, 1b. 43), which commits 
creat ravages by boring in the trunks of the various kinds of 
pine trees. A much smaller species, (Buprestis fulvoguttata, 
the tawny-spotted, ib. 45), has been taken from the trunk of the 
white pme. Young saplings and small limbs of the same spe- 
cies of tree, are inhabited by a beetle of nearly the same size 
with the last-mentioned, to which has been given by Professsor 
Hentz, the name of Dr. Harris’s Buprestis, (Buprestis Harrisit, 
ib. p. 45.) 
The soil natural to most of the pines is a sand formed origi- 
nally by the crumbling or disintegration of the granitic rocks. 
These, in the forms of gneiss, mica slate and granite, are the 
prevailing rocks of Massachusetts; large portions of which, 
moreover, are overspread by the diluvium of sand formed from 
them. A large part of the surface was, therefore, and in many 
places still is, covered with forests of pine. The different species 
are adapted to the opposite extremities of moisture and dryness. 
The pitch pme flourishes on arid and parched sands; the 
white cedar thrives in swamps which are inundated almost 
through the year; the white pine prefers a situation moder- 
ately dry, but is often found in swamps; the red cedar and larch 
are found on rocky hills nearly destitute of soil, and the spruce 
and hemlock grow naturally in places inclined to moisture. 
