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Updated: June 7, 2025
Distinctly Dantesque was the gulf between the huge mountain sides which threatened every moment to fall. One heard the click and thud of hammers, the wild chants of the borers, the slush of water. Being like gnomes and kobolds glided hither and thither half naked figures muffled up by the mist.
Here, scattered about on all sides, were the cores, the hammer-stones that broke them up, and knives, scrapers, borers, spear-heads and arrow-heads galore, in all stages of manufacture. Well, now let us hie to Lingheath, not far off, and what do we find? A family of the name of Dyer carry on to-day exactly the same old method of mining.
That, however, is how all the borers who look to wood for victuals and lodging set about their business. For the harsh work of its two gouges, or curved chisels, the larva of the Capricorn concentrates its muscular strength in the front of its body, which swells into a pestle-head. The Buprestis-grubs, those other industrious carpenters, adopt a similar form; they even exaggerate their pestle.
I held up a bare hand for 5 seconds by the watch, then counted the number of borers on the back; there were 5 to 10. Each day added to the number, and when we got out to the Buffalo country, there were 15 to 25 on the one side of the hand and elsewhere in proportion. On the Nyarling, in early July, the number was increased, being now 20 to 40.
Such stubs, as they are popularly called, are filled with borers, and often deeply cut by the woodpeckers, whose strong bills enable them to penetrate to the very heart of the tree and drag out the lurking larvae.
It is the nature of the borer to maim or kill the tree; it is for the interest of the owner that the tree should live. The conflict is irrepressible, and the weakest must go to the wall. The borer evil can be reduced to a minimum by keeping the young trees banked three or four inches high with firm dirt or ashes; but borers must be followed with the wire, once they enter the bark.
Many of the borers are beetles, and there are other varieties which do great damage, though other kinds are useful to man in destroying harmful insects. Bugs have their mouth parts prolonged into a sharp beak with which they puncture the skin or bark, instead of chewing the leaves, as do beetles.
Look at this exhibit of what is going on around me, at this very moment, July 19, 1912: The bag insects, in thousands, are devouring the leaves of locust and maple trees. The elm beetles are trying to devour the elms; and spraying is in progress. The hickory-bark borers are slaughtering the hickories; and even some park people are neglecting to take the measures necessary to stop it!
Flights of arrows were constantly directed against the borers, and more than one of the youths received greater or less injuries, while exposed to their annoyance. There were indeed a few minutes, during which it remained a question of grave interest how far the risk they ran was likely to be crowned with success.
If, as is very probable, these trees have an attractive odour to certain species of borers, it might very likely lead to their becoming extinct; while other species, to whom the same odour was disagreeable, and who therefore avoided the dangerous trees, would survive, and would be credited by us with an instinct, whereas they would really be guided by a simple sensation.
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