Word: borer
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Dates: during 1910-1919
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While cutting the leopard moth larvae from the limbs of the elms last fall, a small beetle was found, which has since been identified as the European elm bark-borer--scolytus multistriatus-marsh. In Germany it is known as the "splint kafer" and it is one of their most injurious pests. It enters the bark and the newly hatched larvae work in the splint of the live wood causing the bark to loosen and eventually fall off. Scores of trees in the Yard and about Cambridge have been examined and without exception all of them are infected...
Insecticides fail to reach either the leopard moth or bark-borer. And such a spraying as the trees got when attacked by the elm-leaf beetle may have something to do with the apparent absence of insect enemies of the two above-named species. For the spraying of the trees could have easily killed their parasites, which might have been lurking about on the trees at the time the spray- ing was done. And one thing that favors this theory is,--the leopard moth is worst in that part of the Yard which was the most carefully sprayed...
...have heard a great deal recently in Cambridge and Boston to the effect that the elms in the Harvard Yard were being killed by the elm borer and that in five years the trees would all be dead. Two reasons are assigned for this: first, that the persons in charge can not come to an agreement as to how the trees should be treated, and second, lack of funds. It seems to me that if those in charge can not agree it would be well for them to submit the matter to some recognized authority on the subject...