SCOLYTUS SP. 47 

As in the case of most bark beetles, this Scolytus probably 
prefers to attack sickly trees in preference to healthy ones, but 
in. several instances in Jaunsar Il cut them out of trees which, 
as far as external appearances showed, were quite healthy. 
That the insect is liable to ierease mm large numbers under 
favourable coaditions and then infest healtby trees would 
appear to be the case from the 1g00 attack in Bashahr. Two 
areas were very badly attacked, the spots being at some dis- 
tance from one another and the trees in the neighbourhood of 
each infested portion being nearly, if not quite, free from tie 
beetle. 
I was enabled to inspect some of the poles which had been 
cut out (and barked) from one of these areas. They were a 
remarkable sight. Pcles 20—25 feet in length of bole (minus 
top which had been cut off before extraction from forest) and 
with a girth of 4% feet at base, were covered their entire 
length and girth with the scolytid galleries, the mother galleries 
being at times so close that the larval secondary ones interlaced, 
all trace of the symmetrical pattern of the scolytid being 
thereby lost. There could be no doubt of the ultimate cause of 
death of these trees. The whole of the cambium layer had been 
riddled. by the beetles and their larve. 
| Protection and Kemedtes. 
At this stage of our knowledge of the life history of tiis pest 
I can add nothing to the preventive measures instituted in 
‘Bashahr under the advice, I believe, of Mr. Ribbentrop. 
The origin of the attack was attributed by him to the large 
number of suppressed and consequently sickly trees in the pole 
forests, 
On both the areas attacked all infested trees were cut out, 
each one was barked andthe bark burnt. In addition to this, 
each stump was barked and this bark also burnt. Trenches 
were then dug round the stumps. This latter part of the 
protective measures was superfluous, Bark beetles only leave 
the trees by flight. The grubs, as their life history shows, 
never leave them, Six hundred trees were thus removed from 
one ot the infested areas and fifty from the other, watchers 
