The depredations of these insects are enormous. During the early eighties the Southern pine beetle ruined several thousand acres of pines in Texas. Ten years later, 1890-92, it swarmed through western North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia to southern Pennsylvania and over an area aggregating seventy-five thousand square miles, and killed pines of all species and ages, leaving but few alive. Within the past few years the mountain and Western pine beetles have ruined a one-hundred-thousand-acre lodge-pole pine tract in northeastern Oregon, destroying not less than ninety per cent of the stand. During the past decade the Black Hills beetle has been active over the Rocky Mountains, where in some districts it has destroyed from ten to eighty per cent of the Western yellow pines. In the Black Hills the forests over several thousand square miles are ruined. These bug-killed trees deteriorate rapidly. In most cases a beetle-killed pine is pretty well rotted in five years and usually falls to pieces in less than a decade. Borers attack upon the heels of the beetles, and the holes made by the beetles admit water and fungi into the wood. This rapidly reduces the wood to a punky, rotten mass. One day in Colorado I tore a number of wind-wrecked, bug-killed trees to pieces and was busily engaged examining the numerous population of grubs and borers, when some robins and other birds discovered the feast, collected, and impatiently awaited their turn. Perceiving the situation, I dragged a fragment of a log to one side for examination while the birds assembled to banquet and dispute. Returning to the rotten logs for another grub-filled fragment, I paused to watch some wasps that, like the birds, were feasting upon these grubs. A wasp on finding a grub simply thrust his snout into the grub and then braced himself firmly as he bored down and proceeded to suck his victim's fluids. In throwing a log to one side I disturbed a bevy of slender banqueters that I had not seen. Instantly a number of wasps were effervescing round my head. Despite busy arms, they effectively peppered my face, and I fled to a neighboring brook to bathe my wounds.