at a loss. If it will not pay to take low-grade material out of the woods, it most assuredly must be left where it lies. Railroads are much to blame for the non-use of much waste material as the freight rates prohibit the material from being gotten to market. The public and the State must take a hand in this condition of affairs and do everything that is possible to use all of the wood material which we cut. THE FOREST ENEMIES. A tree is open to the attacks of enemies of all kinds at all periods of its life. Fungi and insects are always waiting for a chance to pounce upon it. Just about the time the tree has reached the end of a successful fight with nature, man steps in and in a few moments undoes what may be the work of several hundred years. The tree is now a saw log on its way to the mill. DAMAGE FROM NATURAL ELEMENTS. Many of the elements of nature do all in their power to hinder the successful growth of a tree. Wind damage is perhaps the most common. Individual trees, which have been upturned by the wind, have been seen by everyone. Violent winds sometimes blow over all the trees on a large area. In 1845, in the Adirondacks, the wind blew down a strip of timber half a mile wide and twenty miles long. Snow, sleet and ice do more or less damage by destroying individual trees by overloading and breaking them. Lightning often causes individual destruction and sometimes causes forest fires which burn over thousands of acres. FUNGUS DAMAGE. The lowest form of life which attacks our forests is that division of the plant kingdom known as fungi or rot. We make a distinction between the saprophytic fungus or that which attacks dead wood, and the parasitic fungus, or that which attacks the living tree. The first, saprophytic fungus is a problem for lumbermen principally. As far as as the growing forest is concerned its work is very beneficial, as it clears the ground of dead and inflammable material. Lumbermen can do away with much loss by getting fire-killed timber to the mill as soon as possible after the fire. The second, parasitic fungus, taking the country as a whole, does a great deal of damage. There is practically no grove of trees, no matter how small, that is not affected more or less by fungi. In the main, though, the damage is principally confined to overmature, injured or weakened trees, that is, trees which are dying a natural death. In cleaning up a wooded area, these are the trees which should come out without fail. Fungous damage is not of great importance when we consider the young, vigorously growing trees, the trees which are adding the greatest increment to the forests. There are exceptions to the above generalizations, which it would be well to speak of. The chestnut blight is the best example. This disease has become most serious and threatens to destroy all the chestnut in the northeastern forests, as trees of all sizes, ages and conditions are attacked by it. The European blister rust of the young white pine is another notable exception. When a stand has been partially weakened through fire, fungi may do a great deal of damage to all classes of trees. About the only thing we can do to protect against fungous damage is to remove the diseased trees and burn them, and this operation is seldom practicable. INSECT DAMAGE. It is stated on good authority that, considering the country as a whole, the insects do more damage to the standing timber than do the forest fires. Insect damage may be classed according to the nature of the damage caused by the three general divisions of insects, that is, the sucking, leaf eating and wood boring insects. The damage caused by the first class, the sucking insects, is not of great importance to the forests, as this class is made up principally of scale insects and bark lice and does only a slight amount of damage to the more tender bark species. To briefly consider the damage of the leaf eating insects, we find the most notable examples of damage in the region where the gypsy and brown tail moths are at work. The State of Massachusetts, in coöperation with the Government, is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to keep these insects under control, and yet they are spreading over more and more territory every year. Probably the most important leaf eating insect in New York State is the elm leaf beetle and this is so common to most of us that it is hardly necessary to say more. A tree ordinarily recovers from an attack of leaf eating insects, but if it is long continued, or if two or more leaf crops are eaten in one year, the tree is greatly weakened and usually killed. The greatest damage to forest trees is done by the third class, namely, the wood boring and bark beetle class. These insects are represented by many different species, of which the following are the most common: the hickory borer, the locust borer, the maple borer, the white pine weevil and the bark or engravure beetles. Here, however, we can again say, as was the case with fungous damage, that these insects preferably attack old |