406 



The Moths and Butterflies 



dispar, a European species brought to Massachusetts in 1868, and from 

 1890 to 1900 fought at the public expense. A gentleman living in Med- 

 ford, a town of Massachusetts, imported a number of different kinds of Euro- 

 pean silk-spinning caterpillars in an attempt to find some species which 

 might be bred in this country in place of the mulberry silkworm (Bombyx 

 mori}. Some of the moths escaped from his breeding-cages, and among 

 them some gypsy-moths. In a very few years the species had increased to 

 such numbers and spread throughout such an extent of woods that it seri- 

 ously threatened the destruction of all the forest- and shade-trees in north- 

 eastern Massachusetts. By 1891 it was causing great injury to forest-trees 

 over 200 square miles. So far it has been confined because of the whole- 

 sale operations against it. The State has employed as many as 570 men 

 at a time in spraying, egg-collecting, trunk-banding, etc., in the great fight 



FIG. 589. The California oak-worm moth, Phryganidia californica. A, eggs on leaf; 

 B, just -hatched larva; C, full-grown larva; D, pupa, or chrysalid; E, moth; F, Pimpla 

 behrendsii, parasite of the larva. (B, much enlarged; D and F, twice natural size; 

 others natural size.) 



against the pest and up to 1900 had expended over a million dollars in the 

 struggle. The caterpillar when full grown is i^ inches long, creamy white, 

 thickly sprinkled with black, with dorsal and lateral tufts of long black and 

 yellowish hairs. The cocoon is very slight, merely a few silky threads. The 

 male moths, expanding ij to 2 inches, are brownish yellow with smoky fore 

 wings bearing darker irregular transverse lines and pale hind wings with 

 darker outer margins. The females are large, expanding 2^ inches, and 

 creamy white in color, with irregular transverse gray or blackish lines. 



