296 



The Black Spruce. 



of the subject that I can not withhold a brief account of 

 my investigations and conclusions. 



In August a collecting trip was undertaken in the vi- 

 cinity of Lake Pleasant, Hamilton county. While there 

 it became apparent to me that I was in a region where the 

 spruces were dying. Standing near the outlet of the lake 

 and looking upon the distant mountain slopes toward the 

 northeast, east and south, patches of brown appeared here 

 and there mingled with the usual dark green hue of the 

 forest. The inhabitants told me that these brown patches 

 were groups of dead spruces, that the spruce trees were 

 then rapidly dying and had been for two or three years 

 previous and that in consequence the value of the wood- 

 land was greatly diminishing. One of the most conspicu- 

 ous of these brown patches was on the slope of Speculator 

 mountain, a little more than half way from the base to 

 the summit. Preparations were therefore made to visit 

 this locality. Once on the ground it needed but little ob- 

 servation to satisfy me that the destructive process was 

 then in operation. The ground under some of the spruces 

 was thickly strewn with their fallen leaves, yet green, and 

 every agitating wind was bringing down more of them. 

 The bark of these trees and of others already dead was 

 perforated in many places with small round holes scarcely 

 one-eighth of an inch in diameter. Upon stripping a 

 piece of bark from the trunk of one of the affected trees 

 the apparent cause of the mischief was at once revealed. 

 The surface of the wood and the inner layers of the bark 

 were abundantly furrowed by the winding and branching 

 galleries of a small bark-miuing beetle, an insect known 

 to entomologists as the Hylurgus rufipennis Kirby, though 

 the wings are by no means always red as the name would 

 indicate. Both the mature insect and its larvae occurred 

 in countless numbers under the bark of the dying and re- 

 cently dead trees. In a single instance they were accom- 

 panied by a much smaller beetle of similar shape and 



