22 BULLETIN 1060, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
the open, they often dry sufficiently to be protected from attack the 
following spring. Logs placed in water are safe from further in- 
jury. Damage by these borers can be prevented almost entirely by 
removing the logs from the woods or placing them in water as soon 
as they are cut. 
Larger wood borers are an important factor in the deterioration 
of the sapwood and heartwood of fire-killed trees and logs. During 
the first two summers after the death of the trees or the felling of 
the trees the borers are most active, and at the end of the two-year 
period the salvage value is .usually next to nothing. If the logs 
are placed in water or barked within a few weeks after cutting, losses 
by these borers may be avoided. Logs which are loosely piled in 
the open soon after cutting usually escape damage because of the 
rapid drying out of the thin bark, which is then unattractive to the 
borers for the laying of eggs. Dr. J. M. Swaine, of the Canadian 
Entomological Branch, recommends covering the logs thickly with 
brush. The logs to be covered should be piled on skidways and 
given a very thick covering of green limbs so that the sunlight can 
not penetrate at all to the logs beneath. 
WIND. 
Sitka spruce, because of its characteristically shallow root system,, 
can not withstand severe winds. Trees which grow on exposed 
situations along the coast where they encounter severe winds are 
windfirm, but they are also scrubby and of little use for lumber. In 
the virgin forests under normal conditions only the very diseased 
trees are likely to be windthrown, but in cut-over areas trees isolated 
by logging and those which border on fresh cuttings are invariably 
windthrown. (PL XVIII.) Spruce trees which have grown in 
dense stands never become wind-resistant, and full consideration 
must be given this fact before a method of cutting and a man- 
agement policy are adopted for a spruce forest. 
The hurricane that swept the western edge of the Olympic pen- 
insula, Washington, in January, 1921, felled from 5 to 95 per cent 
of the timber on a swath 60 miles long and 20 miles wide in the 
heart of the spruce belt. Six billion feet or more of virgin western 
hemlock, Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, silver fir, and western red cedar 
timber was laid flat by the wind. Perhaps a billion feet of Sitka 
spruce in the State of Washington was windthrown in that storm. 
All species suffered alike regardless of their relative windfirmness. 
In addition to windthrow, other damage from the elements is 
wrought upon spruce timber by breakage and wind-shake. The 
breakage consists in the shattering of the tops of overmature and 
decadent trees, and this permits the entrance of fungous growth, 
