228 
HALF-HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 
richly illustrated works. Such a work as that of Ratzeburg 
entitled “Animals Injuring Forests,” has a double value. 
Not only is it of high practical importance, but the minute 
information therein contained regarding the habits of the 
destructive insects and their many parasites, the relation 
of the trees themselves to the animal world, the peculiar 
diseases resulting from their attacks, the deformities and 
changes wrought not only in single trees, but extended 
through large tracts of forest, all bear on theoretical points 
in biology, such as the supposed struggle for existence in 
organized beings, the origin of sports, strains, races, varie¬ 
ties and species, which combine to lend the highest interest 
to such stores of facts as are to be found in the works of 
this learned German. 
Let us now walk through the pine woods, and notice the 
work of some of the more remarkable insects. I could take 
the reader by a favorite walk in the pine woods of Maine, 
and show him among a splendid growth of tall, straight, 
white pines, one enormous tree whose girth twenty feet from 
the ground is between fifteen and twenty feet. Above that 
the trunk divides into four branches, curved outwards at 
their base, forming a double crotch. In another walk I 
could show him several large trees, all within a few rods 
of each other, variously gnarled and distorted, either with 
single curved trunks, or double or triple-headed monsters, 
specimens of vegetable monstrosities which would delight a 
Geoffrey St. Hilaire or Dareste. 
What is the origin of this deformation ? It is a common 
little weevil which has the habit of laying its eggs late in the 
spring in the terminal shoots of white pine bushes. Sev¬ 
eral grubs hatch out and burrow in various directions under 
the bark. As they grow apace they sink into the wood, 
as far as the pith, and by the end of the second summer, 
according to Professor Peck, as quoted by Harris, they have 
each made a little cell in the wood, cleverly lined with pine 
4 
