File:1937. Insectary set up by Robert L. Furniss at the Pack Forest, west of Mt. Rainier. La Grande, Washington. (34605609350).jpg

Insectary set up by Robert L. Furniss at the Pack Forest. La Grande, Washington.

Photo by: Robert L. Furniss Date: 1937

Credit: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region, State and Private Forestry, Forest Health Protection. Collection: Bureau of Entomology, Robert L. Furniss Collection; La Grande, Oregon. Image: F-191

Notes from a 1977 interview with Robert L. Furniss (RLF) by R.C. Larson (RCL): RCL: "What else did you do after you came back to Portland?" RLF: “I set up a field laboratory at Pack Forest, which is the University of Washington’s experimental forest just to the west of Mt. Rainier. We studied a variety of insects: wood products insects, carpenter ants, ambrosia beetles, and a little weevil that attacks the young Douglas-fir (Cylindrocopturas furnissi), which is still a problem. I started a study on flat-headed borers (Buprestis aurulenta and B. langi) that bore in seasoned wood. In the forest, they lay their eggs in downed timber, dead timber, and also newly sawn lumber, and therefore get into houses. And they will also lay their eggs in exposed lumber that is unpainted. Well, our interest was in the fact that these are reported to be quite long-lived. There are instances on record that would indicate that they live 20 to 50 years, from the egg to the adult stage. But this was circumstantial, in other words, a board was shipped to Britain, or someplace, and, since this insect is not native to Britain, it comes out and is alive and since the board can be identified as a Douglas-fir board that came over in a certain year, the assumption is that the borer must have been in the board all that time. There are a lot of examples of this circumstantial evidence. But in Pack Forest in those early years I got them to lay eggs and developed a method of maintaining larvae in blocks, and I still have some B. aurulenta in the basement. At least a few are alive [continued by M. Furniss at Moscow, ID after 1980]. We’ve got some in this house. They came from timber that was cut in the 1933 Tillamook Burn. They’re just a nuisance; if they come out through a wall in the living room, it creates a little excitement. But that’s about all. We caught live female adults and then induced them to lay eggs. When the eggs hatched, about a month later, we cut a little notch in each experimental block and put a, larva in it and sealed it. They just go in and live there, happily, I guess, for a long time. None has emerged yet under the indoor (dry) conditions that they have been kept since 1939-1941." Source (page 17): <a href="http://www.foresthistory.org/Research/FurnissRL.pdf" rel="nofollow">www.foresthistory.org/Research/FurnissRL.pdf</a>

To learn more about this photo collection see: Wickman, B.E., Torgersen, T.R. and Furniss, M.M. 2002. Photographic images and history of forest insect investigations on the Pacific Slope, 1903-1953. Part 2. Oregon and Washington. American Entomologist, 48(3), p. 178-185.

For additional historical forest entomology photos, stories, and resources see the Western Forest Insect Work Conference site: <a href="http://wfiwc.org/content/history-and-resources" rel="nofollow">wfiwc.org/content/history-and-resources</a>