OUR FORESTS 25 
3. Maxine A Camprire.—Before building a campfire scrape away 
all inflammable material from 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 Pur Our a Camprire.—Stir the coals while soaking them 
with water. Turn charred 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. Brus Burninc.—Never burn slash or brush in windy weather 
or while there is the slightest danger that the fire will get away. 
INSECTS 
Insects are constantly injuring the forest, just as year by year 
they bring loss to the farm. 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 excavate 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 off 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 continue 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 
sipsy 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 area of the Calosoma beetle and other insect enemies of the 
eipsy moth has done much to lessen the ravages of this insect. 
Funcous DISEASES 
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 
