834 FIFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 
to Bangor. Prom personal observation and inquiry it is safe for us to 
report thai cast of the Penobscot River, in eastern Maine, south of 
Aroostook County, there are no areas of dead spruce. Returning to 
Brunswick from Bangor, the characteristic patches or large clumps of 
dead spruce and fir were not seen until we reached a point south of 
Richmond, and near Bowdoinham, on and near tide-water on the Oat- 
nance River. The general absence of any extensive areas of dead sprncea 
around the Rangeley Lakes and the White Mountains lias already been 
referred to in our report. It thus appears that the injury from this worm 
has been confined, at least south of Aroostook County, to an area on 
the coast extending from Portland to Warren, and extending but a few 
miles inland from the sea or tide water. (See map, Plate xn.) 
The injury resulting from the attacks of the bud-caterpillar are char- 
acteristic, as we have stated, the trees dyiug in masses or clumps of 
greater or less extent, as if the moths had spread out from different cen- 
ters before laying their eg^s and the caterpillars, hatching, had eaten the 
buds and leaves, and caused the trees to locally perish. From all we 
have learned the past seasou we are now convinced that the spruce bud- 
worm (Tortrix fumiferana) is the primary cause of the disease on the 
coast. As remarked to us by the Rev. Elijah Kellogg, of Harpswell, Me., 
who has observed the habits of these caterpillars more closely thauauy 
one else we have met, where the worms have once devoured the buds 
the tree is doomed. This, as Mr. Kellogg remarked, is due to the fact 
that there are in the spruce but a few buds, usually two or three at the 
end of a twig; if the caterpillars destroy these the tree does not repro- 
duce them until the year following. If any one will examine the buds 
of the spruce and fir they will see that this must be the case. Hence 
the ease with which the attacks of this caterpillar, when sufficiently 
abundant, destroy the tree. We have not noticed that the spruce and 
fir throw out new buds in July and August after such an invasion, the 
worm disappearing in June. On the other hand, the hackmatack or 
larch when wholly or partly defoliated by the saw-fly worm (Nematus) 
soon sends out new leaves. By the end of August we have observed 
such leaves about a quarter of an inch long. In the following spring a 
larch which has been stripped of its leaves the summer previous will 
leave out again freely, although the leaves are always considerably, 
sometimes one-half, shorter. Now, if any one will examine the leaf buds 
of the larch it will be seen that they are far more numerous than in the 
spruce and fir or other species of the genus Abies, being scattered along 
the twig at intervals of from a line to half an inch apart. Hence the 
superior vitality of the larch, at least as regards its power of overcom- 
ing or recuperating from the effects of the loss of its leaves in midsum- 
mer. Besides this, the bud-worm of the spruce aud fir is most active 
and destructive in June, at the time the tree is putting forth its buds, 
while the hackmatack, which drops its leaves in the autumn, has become 
whollv leaved out some weeks before the saw-fly worms appear. For 
