1908.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT- -No. 73. 219 



REPORT OF DR. JOHN B. SMITH, 



ENTOMOLOGIST, NEW JERSEY AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



NEW BRUNSWICK, N. .1., July 1, 1907. 



DEAR MR. KIBKLAND: --Permit me first of all to express to you 

 my admiration of the wonderful results that you have obtained in your 

 two years campaign against the gypsy and brown-tail moths in Massa- 

 chusetts. The two days that I have just spent in the infested districts 

 show a condition which two years ago I would have deemed it impossible 

 to obtain. 



As you are aware, my acquaintance with the campaign against the 

 gypsy moth dates back far toward the beginning of the work under 

 Fernald and Forbush, and nearly or quite ten years ago I made a 

 careful study of conditions as they then existed and of the status of 

 the work at that time. The effort then was to exterminate, and the 

 brown-tail moth had not yet entered as a complication. The territory 

 was then well in hand, practical extermination of outlying colonies had 

 been effected, and there were only a few bad centers of infestation 

 which were being treated vigorously. 



The questions which I was then asked to answer were, whether in my 

 opinion extermination was possible, and whether some attempt should 

 not be made to obtain from the native home of the gypsy moth some 

 of its natural enemies as aids in the work. In my report at that time 

 I stated that in my opinion extermination was quite possible along the 

 lines of work then being done, and I advised against any attempt to 

 bring in natural enemies or to make scientific studies looking to control 

 only. I urged a continuance of the work with equal thoroughness, and 

 expressed a belief that the result aimed at was almost within grasp. 

 For some little time thereafter the work was continued; but then, un- 

 fortunately, it was stopped by a failure of the State Legislature to 

 continue appropriations. 



For five years no effort to check the insects was made, and at the 

 end of that time the gypsy moth had regained all its old territories 

 and had spread considerably beyond them. The brown-tail moth had 

 far outstripped the earlier arrival, and had extended into adjacent 

 States. In 1905, when for the fourth time I went over the infested 

 territory and looked over not acres but square miles of woodland 

 stripped by the gypsy moth and webbed up by the recently hatched 

 brood of brown-tails, it seemed as if even control was beyond human 

 power, and it required courage of no mean quality to undertake a fight 

 that seemed so hopeless. In 1906 I was out of the country, and learned 

 of the results of the work by report only. My observations just made 

 have enabled me to judge with some degree of accuracy of present con- 

 ditions. 



Matters are now quite different from what they were ten years ago; 

 extermination of the brown-tail moth is scarcely within hope of attain- 



