3 
of other trees, on the campus of the Normal School; all the small 
feeding roots of these trees were dead, altho there was nothing 
about them to indicate injury by insects. 
Distribution of the Injury 
Practically identical reports of injury have been received this 
year, either from my own assistants or from office correspondents, 
from Cairo, Carbondale, Centralia, Clayton, Du # Quoin, Edwards- 
ville, Fairfield, Galatia, McLeansboro, Mt. Vernon, Quincy, Rob¬ 
inson, Sumner, and Vandalia*—fourteen towns scattered thru thir¬ 
teen counties of southern and western Illinois. Doubtless a criti¬ 
cal examination of elm trees in towns and on private premises 
elsewhere would disclose an even more general occurrence of this 
trouble. 
As none of the cases reported were from woodlands, but all 
were those of more or less isolated trees growing under artificial 
conditions, I have taken some pains to ascertain whether woodland 
elms were similarly affected. One of my assistants, Mr. Wesley 
P. Flint, made in 1909-10 a practically complete reconnaissance of 
all the forests of southern and western Illinois, including high 
lands and bottom lands, hills and plains, and the extremes of Jthe 
state from Jo Daviess to Alexander counties. His object was to 
make a comprehensive study of insect injuries to forest trees and 
timber products in this state. In reply to my special inquiry he 
says: “I have not found elms dying in any numbers in any forest 
tract that I have examined in the state. This, of course, does not 
apply to stands of scattered trees around which the ground has 
been cultivated." Mr. Smith, who was especially instructed to in¬ 
spect woodland trees about Du Quoin for a comparison of their 
condition with those in that town itself, reports that he saw a hun¬ 
dred and fifty elms in the woodlands along Reese Creek and Little 
Muddy Creek bottoms, but found none that were dying, and none 
that had dred during the present summer, altho a few had perished 
from some cause at some time within the last three years. 
The present difficulty with the elm in the southern part of the 
state is thus clearly one which is virtually limited to trees growing 
outside the forests, and usually under conditions more or less artifi¬ 
cial to the tree—sometimes extremely so, where, for example, the 
elms are standing in a closely clipped turf beside a paved street. 
A Kentucky Instance 
All the facts in my possession indicate that our Illinois elm 
disease is identical with one described in 1899 by Professor H 
