STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
689 
least defective and unsafe, was yet iti reality fearfully so. Some 
one of those minute timber-beetles which subsist upon the wood 
of dead trees had here had its abode, multitudes of them proba¬ 
bly mining their burrows everywhere through the interior, as is 
their habit, and then eating their way out and departing to 
found new colonies elsewhere. As the little pin-holes which 
they perforate scarcely diminish the strength of the timber in 
the least, they are deemed of no consequence. And yet from 
every shower that passes, water is admitted through these per¬ 
forations to the interior of the timber, filling the multitude of 
little cells which these insects have there excavated and satu¬ 
rating the wood as though it were a sponge. The outer surface 
being exposed to the atmosphere speedily dries and thus re¬ 
mains perfectly sound, whilst the interior continuing damp for 
several days, rapidly though insidiously decays. Thus the sad 
disaster to which we have alluded, and the destruction of pro¬ 
perty and loss of life with which it was attended, there can 
scarcely be a doubt, was caused by one of those minute insects 
which are popularly regarded as being of trifling consequence, 
since they never attack healthy living trees. 
Thus, in addition to those insects which prey upon it when 
alive and growing, every kind of wood appears to have one or 
more of these small creatures peculiar to it, which make their 
attack after it is dead, rapidly accelerating its decay. Instances 
of timber, furniture and utensils ruined by insects of this kind, 
are frequently presenting themselves to our notice. Wood thus 
perforated externally with pin-holes and having its interior 
everywhere mined with the tracks of these small beetles and 
their larvrn, with its substance more or less reduced hereby to 
a fine dry powder, is currently termed “powder posted” in 
our community; and in books this same affection is sometimes 
referred to as constituting one of the kinds of “ dry rot.” 
On bringing together, as I am endeavoring to do, all the in. 
sects of our country which are at present known to be injurious, 
it forms a list of depredators upon some of our trees that ap¬ 
pears truly formidable. And yet, no one must deem that what 
is now presented in these Reports, embraces all the insects, or 
even all the important ones that occur upon the several kinds 
[Ag. Trans.] 44 
