230 
HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. 
[Packard. 
Dr. Fitch says that “young thrifty-growing pines are its 
favorite resort, and among these it selects those that are 
most vigorous, and whose topmost shoot has made the great¬ 
est advance the preceding year. But I have seen it so nu¬ 
merous that not only the topmost shoots of every tree in the 
grove, but many of the lateral ones also were invaded and 
destro^^ed by it. * * * The tree that is attacked con¬ 
tinues its growth upward during the fore part of the season 
as usual, sending out from the summit of the shoot that is 
infested a leading shoot with a number of lateral branches 
around its base. But the growth of these new succulent 
twigs is arrested and they begin to wilt and wither about the 
middle of July, the worms having by this time become so 
large, and mined and wounded the stalk below to such an 
extent that its juices are exhausted, and it fails to transmit 
any nourishment to these tender green shoots at the summit, 
which consequently dry up and perish.” 
Here again the forester is aided by his best friends, the 
birds, which pick out the grubs and eat them. There are 
also several parasitic insects which further reduce their 
ranks. 
Another pine weevil, equally abundant and often as de¬ 
structive, is the Hylobius. It is a larger beetle, and darker, 
less reddish than the white pine weevil (Pissodes strobi). It 
is particularly destructive to the pitch pine, so much so in 
the southern states that Wilson, the ornithologist, thus 
speaks of its depredations near Charleston, South Carolina, 
as quoted by Harris. “Would it be believed that the larvm 
of an insect, or fly, no larger than a grain of rice, should 
silentty, and in one season, destroy some thousand acres of 
pine-trees, many of them from two to three feet in diameter, 
and a hundred and fifty feet high? Yet whoever passes 
along the high road from Georgetown to Charleston, in 
South Carolina, about twenty miles from the former place, 
can have striking and melancholy proofs of the fact. In 
' 6 
