CULTIVATION-. 



13 



recently removed, the ground should be left for two or three seasons 

 before being again planted, so as to allow a rank, natural herbage to 

 grow up, which in the autumn previous to the ground being replanted, 

 should, when in a dry condition, be set fire to and carefully burned ; 

 after which, and before commencing to plant, the ground should Le 

 carefully examined; and should there then remain any appreciable 

 quantity of bark, either scattered upon the ground or upon the old 

 stools, or' scattered fragments of the old branches,- it should all be 

 carefully collected into heaps and burned, or otherwise removed from 

 the ground which is to be planted with firs and pines ; for experience 

 has afforded me sufficient evidence that all Wood-Beetle insects which 

 are injurious to the pine tribe in the growing state, are dependent upon 

 hark, not luood, for their existence ; while several of the species live 

 and exist upon wood ; which species and varieties, however, are 

 wood-vermin, not plant or tree enemies. After pointing out these three 

 classes of insects, which includes all that the cultivator of firs and 

 pines has to fear in any ordinary seasons as dangerous, I now proceed 

 to the second order of our enemies, stepping from the animal to the 

 vegetable kingdom. 



As in the animal, so in the vegetable kingdom we find marshalled iu 

 battle array the enemies of the firs and pines ; and here they are nu- 

 merically far more formidable, and in their ravages equally if not 

 more destructive ; and in their natures and habits of life much 

 more varied and mysterious, many of them being, in so far as 

 science is concerned, in their nomenclature and classification, in a 

 state of much obscurity. Although practically acquainted with their 

 devastating influences upon the pine tribe, yet, I am placed in the 

 humiliating, because defective, ]30sition of having to classify them as 

 parasitical vegetable enemies. To serve our present purpose, however, 

 we may divide them into two classes — External and Internal ; the 

 former such kinds as attack or live upon the external parts of the 

 trees, and the latter such species as injure with their deleterious ingre- 

 dients the internal parts of the trees. 



External Parasites, then, are such species or varieties as are found 

 growing upon the trunks, branches, or foliage of the pine tribe, and 

 they are many ; for here I include the cryptogamic mosses and lichens, 

 and a few of those mysterious organisms, the most obscure of j^ature's 

 living products — the fungus tribe. Fortunately, however, for the writer, 

 this numerous class of enemies, in so far as they are destructive to my 

 present subjects, can be summarily put "hors de combat for, in each 



