The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1905-06-08
CURSE OF FORESTS.
WOOD BEETLES PLAY HAVOC
WITH VALUABLE TREES.
They Are Particularly Ruinous TO
Spruce and Pine in Vast Areas
Grim Pictures Are
Formed.


An hour spent in examining newly
sawed or planed lumber reveals some
striking features and outlines made by
beetles that bore into the timber. Out
lines Of all living creatures can be
traced. The whole alphabet Of both
English and Greek, print and script.
have been pointed out, and the ten digits
Domes and mosques and human face
profiles are not rare. No stretch of i'm
agination is necessary to recognize the
outlines Of rivers and lakes and bays.
with islands interspersed. In a cross
section Of an oak flag and staff were
outlined. the main channel. or cham
Der. being the STAFF, and the side CALLER
les finished a complete flag. A third
section presented an outline of spoon
that seemed made by human hands
In another was an outlined serpent,
and third was an almost perfect cross.
and in the dried colored dust was the
outline Of a human figure so plain and
impressive that one was filled with
awe while gazing at It. In q collection
of the forms made by those artistic bor-
ings some are SO artistic and finished
that few can believe them made by the
wood beetles.
Besides being artists these wood
beetles are destroyers Of incalculable
damage. Each particular wood, as
oak, pine and spruce. has a different
beetle species. and even a different va
riety Of the same species Is found In DIFF
ferent kinds of oaks. Their workings
are varied Some bore In the bark
some in the white sap wood, and some
bore only In the colored heartwood.
Pine forests show IS varieties of the
same species Of borers The spruce
destroying beetle actually threatens the
annihilstion Of the spruce forests from
New York to New Brunswick. Their
work is quick and deadly. The tree is
girdled with chambers in few weeks.
and within short season the largest
tree Is dying. The spruce and pine
beetles destroy more lumber annually
than is destroyed by both fires and man.
The pine beetle is threatening to de-
populate the Black Hills of people, for
the mining interests Of that section
must have cheap timber. pine being the
only available supply to be had at q
nominal figure, growing native close at
hand. Fifty per cent. of the Black Hills
forests are dying, becoming worthless
to miners. The result is that when the
pine timber goes. the people mining on
small scale will also fail livelihood.
and go away.
A few years ago the pine forests of
Virginia and West Virginia we're under
beetle-ban to such an2 extent that de-
struction seemed evident, for a beetle
epidemic was on hand. About $4,000
square miles of timber were attacked
and thousands of trees fell victims with
in the summers of 1891 and 1892. bu.
scourge was lifted in 1893 by an unprece-
dented freeze in the two Virginias, and
scarcely a beetle was left north of the
Carolinas.
While forests have lost vast areas by
fires and by timber vandals. yet ths
figures presented by these two sources
Of reduction would pail before the mil
lions Of the ravaging effects of the tim.
ber beetles. Where man and fire have
dealt in thousands, the beetles have dali
In millions Fifty per cent Of the pine
and spruce trees south Of Virginia are
diseased by the beetle, Louisiana anf
Texas showing countless "sorrel tops
In the death grasp of the beetles. The
wood Is of no value as lumber as soor
as the borings have so advanced as t
show In the leaves of the trees. Soor
after the tops show the intruder presen
a fungi attacks the sap wood giving 1t Z
blush cast. and this, with the chamber:
and galleries running hither ant
thither, pronounce the tree worthless