12 
BULLETIN 418, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
Table 4 shows strikingly the damage that ordinary surface fires 
have done to the yellow-pine timber in several instances in various 
parts of Oregon: 
Table 4. — Damage done by surface fires to merchantable yellovj pine over 12 inches in 
diameter. 
[Average of 156 sample acres distributed over four typical fresh burns in Oregon.] 
Locality. 
Percentage by number of 
trees in each class. 
Appar- 
ently un- 
injured. 
Burned 
to death. 
Felled 
by fire. 1 
Scarred 
bjfira 2 
3.2 
( 3 ) 
( 3 ) 
2.7 
0.8 
6.8 
3.2 
31.9 
43.2 
4fi. Q 
64 1 
50 
49.9 
2. 3 AS- s 
49 5 
i The figures in this column Avould be fully twice as large if the percentage by volume of the trees that 
were killed, instead of the number, were taken, since it is chiefly the larger trees that are felled by fire. 
2 This column includes also trees that were scarred by previous fires, since it is impossible to distinguish 
those scarred in the last fire from those previously injured. 
3 On these burns the trees which were actually killed by the intense heat of the fire were not distin- 
guished fr om those killed by being felled by the fire eating out basal fire scars. 
SOURCES OF INJURY OTHER THAN FIRE. 
INSECTS.i 
Next to fire, insects are the most destructive enemies of yellow 
pine. Hardly a square mile can be found in the State in which there 
is not fresh evidence of insect damage to the living timber. There 
are many insects, chiefly boring grubs, that work in dead or dying 
yellow-pine trees and in yellow-pine lumber, but relatively few that 
attack the living tree. In Oregon there are but three species 
important enough to interest the forester and timberland owner; 
one of them is a defoliator and the others are bark beetles. The 
defoliator is the " pine butterfly " (Neoplasia menapia), a small white 
moth, which, when in the caterpillar farm (the caterpillars are black, 
with bright green markings, and are about 1 J inches long at maturity), 
feeds upon the needles of yellow pine. Sometimes the foliage on a 
tree is almost all eaten off and the tree suffers severe damage or, if 
the defoliation is repeated, death. This insect is found to some 
extent in various parts of Oregon, but so far as known it is not now 
doing any great amount qf damage. There have been a number of 
serious infestations of the insect elsewhere, notably in Yakima and 
Chelan Counties, Washington, where yellow-pine timber over a con- 
siderable area was killed. It is a pest which is decidedly dangerous 
when it becomes abundant. 
There are a large number of species of bark beetles which are more 
or less harmful to living yellow pine, but only two of them are par- 
ticularly important in Oregon, the western pine destroyer (Dendroc- 
1 See Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Entomology, Bulletins 32; 38, pt. 2; and 83, pt. 1; and Circulars 
125, 126, 127, and 129, for full description of these insects. 
