Part 3 (1/2)

Forest insects and tree diseases occasion heavy losses each year a marketable trees Insects cause a total loss of more than 100,000,000 annually to the forest products of the United States A great number of destructive insects are constantly at work in the forests injuring or killing live trees or else attacking dead ti shoots on trees Bark and tiirdle trees and destroy the wood Many borers and tis and lumber after they are cut and before they are removed from the forest This scattered work of the insects here, there, and everywhere throughout the forests causes great dae

Different kinds of flies and s on the leaves of the trees After the eggs hatch, the baby caterpillars feed on the tender, juicy leaves Sos destroy all the leaves and thus re food and drink Wire worms attack the roots of the tree Leaf hoppers suck on the sap supply of the leaves Leaf rollers cause the leaves to curl up and die Trees injured by fire fall easy prey before the attacks of forest insects It takes a healthy, sturdy tree to escape injury by these pirates of the forests There are more than five hundred insects that attack oak trees and at least two hundred and fifty different species that carry on destruction a the pines

Insect pests have worked so actively that many forests have lost practically all their best trees of certain species Quantities of the largest spruce trees in the Adirondacks have been killed off by bark beetles The saw-fly worm has killed off most of the mature larches in these eastern forests As they travel over the National and State Forests, the rangers are always on the watch for signs of tree infection Whenever they notice red-brown masses of pitch and sawdust on the bark of the trees, they know that insects are busy there Where the needles of a pine or spruce turn yellow or red, the presence of bark beetles is shown

Signs of pitch on the bark of coniferous trees are the first syh the bark and into the wood There they lay eggs The parent beetles soon die but their children continue the work of burrowing in the wood

Finally, they kill the tree by h the layers of wood that act as waiters to carry the food fro these young develop into full-grown beetles, and come out from the diseased tree They then attack new trees

When the forest rangers find evidences of serious infection, they cut down the diseased trees They strip the bark from the trunk and branches and burn it in the fall or winter when the beetles are working in the bark and can be destroyed e tract, and there is a nearby market for the lumber the timber is sold as soon as possible Trap trees are also used in controlling certain species of injurious forest insects Certain trees are girdled with an ax so that they will become weakened or die, and thus provide easy means of entrance for the insects The beetles swarreat numbers When the tree is full of insects, it is cut down and burned In this way, infections which are not too severe can often be re beetles are the most destructive insects that attack our forests They have wasted enorhout the southern states The eastern spruce beetle has destroyed countless feet of spruce The Engelmann spruce beetle has devastated many forests of the Rocky Mountains The Black Hills beetle has killed billions of feet of marketable timber in the Black Hills of South Dakota The hickory bark beetle, the Douglas fir beetle and the larch wori cause most of the forest tree diseases A tree disease is any condition that prevents the tree fro in a normal, healthy manner Acid fumes from smelters, frost, sunscald, dry or extrerowth of trees Leaf diseases lessen the food supplies of the trees Bark diseases prevent the movement of the food supplies

Sapwood ailments cut off the water supply that rises from the roots Seed and flower diseases prevent the trees fro ain entrance to the trees only through knots and wounds Infection usually occurs through wounds in the tree trunk or branches caused by lightning, fire, or by ive off pitch to cover such wounds In this way they protect the injuries against disease infection The hardwood trees are unable to protect their wounds as effectively as the evergreens Where the wound is large, the exposed sapwood dies, dries out, and cracks The fungi enter these cracks and work their way to the heartwood Many of the fungi cannot live unless they reach the heartwood of the tree Fires wound the base and trunks of forest trees severely so that they are exposed to serious destruction by heartrot

Foresters try to locate and dispose of all the diseased trees in the State and Government forests They strive to remove all the sources of tree disease froerms are kept away from the timberlands

Soly in forest regions that it is alht is a fungous disease that is killing i of this disease worh the holes in the bark of the trees, and spread around the trunk Diseased patches or cankers form on the limbs or trunk of the tree After the canker forht has killed most of the chestnut trees in New York and Pennsylvania It is now active in Virginia and West Virginia and is working its way down into North and South Carolina

[Illustration: SECTION OF A VIRGIN FOREST]

Diseased trees are a menace to the forest They rob the healthy trees of space, light and food That is why it is necessary to remove them as soon as they are discovered In the s are practised widely Wounds are treated and cured and the trees are pruned and sprayed at regular intervals In our extensive woods such practices are too expensive All the foresters can do is to cut down the sick trees in order to save the ones that are sound

There is a big difference between tree dai and mistletoe The insects are always present in the forest However, it is only occasionally that they concentrate and work great injury and dae in any one section At rare intervals, some very destructive insects e number of trees in a short tiency puts thei, on the other hand, develop slowly and work over long periods Sudden outbreaks of fungous diseases are unusual

Heavy snows, lightning and wind storiants of the forest Heavy falls of snow , tall trees to such an extent that they break

Lightning--it is worst in the hills and e a number of trees in the saht, they are usually dai co trees are so forest storer trees and cripple and deform them Winds benefit the forests in that they blon old trees that are no longer of er and healthier trees to grow Usually the trees that are blon have shallow roots or else are situated in marshy, wet spots so that their root-hold in the soil is not secure Trees that have been exposed to fire are often weakened and blon easily

Where excessive livestock grazing is pere s by browsing They eat the tender shoots of the trees The traes the very young trees Onof sheep frequently breaks up the forest floor of sponge-like grass and debris and thus aids freshets and floods In the Alps of France sheep grazing destroyed the rass which replaced the woods Destructive floods resulted It has cost the French people e done by the sheep

The Federal Governn tree diseases out of the United States As soon as any serious disease is discovered in foreign countries the Secretary of Agriculture puts in force a quarantine against that country No seed or tree stock can be is or plants introduced to this country are given thorough exaovernment experts at the ports where the products are received froated, or if found diseased, destroyed In this ainst new diseases which n plants and tree stock

CHAPTER VIII

THE GROWTH OF THE FORESTRY IDEA

Our forests of the New World were so abundant when the early settlers landed on the Atlantic Coast that it was alh cleared land in one tract to make a 40-acre farm These thick, dense timberlands extended ard to the prairie country It was but natural, therefore, that the forest should be considered by these pioneers as an obstacle and viewed as an enemy Farms and settlements had to be hewed out of the timberlands, and the forests seein forests of the United States covered approximately 822,000,000 acres They are now shrunk to one-sixth of that area At one time they were the richest forests in the world Today there are rowth Considerable can be restored if the essential measures are started on a national scale Such measures would insure an adequate luulations concerning the cutting of luested as early as the seventeenth century Ply the cutting of timber from the Colony lands without official consent This is said to be the first conservation law passed in America William Penn was one of the early chaan He ordered his colonists to leave one acre of forest for every five acres of land that were cleared

In 1799 Congress set aside 200,000 for the purchase of a small forest reserve to be used as a supply source of shi+p tiave the President the power to call upon the Army and Navy whenever necessary to protect the live oak and red cedar timber so selected in Florida

In 1827, the Government started its first work in forestry It was an attempt to raise live oak in the Southern States to provide shi+p tiislature began to investigate the destruction of the forests of that state in order to protect thean and Maine, in turn, followed suit These were some of the first steps taken to study our forests and protect theainst possible extinction

The purpose of the Tiress in 1873 was to increase national interest in reforestation It provided that every settler ould plant and maintain 40 acres of timber in the treeless sections should be entitled to secure patent for 160 acres of the public do of all the states and territories west of the Mississippi, except Texas, as well as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi This act, as well as several State laws, failed because the settlers did not know enough about tree planting The laws also were not effective because they did not prevent dishonest practices