Whether viewed from a commercial or sylvicultural point of view, the widespread damage caused to timber from insect attacks can scarcely be overrated. The depredations in various parts of our own country, particularly in young plantations, are bad enough, but when compared with those of Europe and America they appear insignificant. In France and Germany whole woods have been wiped out by insect pests, while the Government of Bavaria were mulcted in something like £100,000 by the destruction of its spruce forests. The United States fares no better, for we find that over a period of ten years the amount of timber killed and reduced in value was calculated at fully £10,000,000. The coffee plantations of Ceylon suffered much from the attacks of a fungus, and we could go on multiplying cases. In our own country the ravages of the pine beetle and of the larch disease have caused incalculable damage; indeed, in the latter case there is hardly a plantation of larch where the presence of the fell disease cannot be distinctly traced, while the pine beetle has ruined whole plantations both in England and Scotland. Though the adult bark and wood-boring beetles do a great amount of damage, yet that inflicted by the caterpillar or grub from the egg is greater still, and in the case of fungi we have a typical example of their destructive properties in the case of the well-known larch disease. The =Pine Beetle= (_Myelophilus {Hylurgus_} _piniperda_) is a dreaded enemy to not a few species of Pinus, but particularly _P. sylvestris_, _P. laricio_, _P. austriaca_ and _P. Strobus_. The injury done by this beetle consists in its destruction of the leading shoots of the tree it attacks. It enters by boring a hole into the side of the shoot until it reaches the pith, after which its course is directed upwards, and an exit made at the terminal bud. This tunnelling of the shoot so weakens it that frequently during stormy weather it is broken across at the point where the beetle entered. Not only are unhealthy trees attacked by the pine beetle, but young and robust-growing specimens frequently fall a prey to its insidious depredations. June, July and August are the months when it is most commonly found. The only remedy is to collect and burn the affected shoots—work that requires to be done with the utmost care to prevent the escape of the wary insect. Burning all brushwood in plantations is a great preventive. The =Pine Weevil= (_Curculio_ {_Hylobius_} _Abietis_) is another destructive insect, which differs from the former in waging its attacks against the buds of the leaders and branches, as also by eating patches of the bark here and there on the stems and branches. The various species of Abies suffer most, but the pines are occasionally attacked as well. It is always most destructive in young plantations growing on the margins of old woods, and equally bad amongst trees that have been planted on the site of a former pine plantation.