44 THE GYPSY MOTH. 



Your committee has from year to year, as in duty bound, 

 reported that an alarming increase and spread of the moth 

 was progressing in these woodlands, in spite of all the work 

 that could be done to check it with manifestly insufficient 

 appropriations. 



In 1895 your committee ascertained and duly reported 

 that the forest infestation of 1892 (400 acres) had increased 

 to 3,000 acres. The increased appropriation granted in 

 1895 made possible the cleaning up of a small pail of 

 these woodlands ; but, as the appropriation was greatly 

 reduced and delayed again in 1896, much of the advan- 

 tage gained by the work done in 1895 was lost. At least 

 2,000 acres of these woods were found in the winter of 

 1896-97 to be in a worse condition than ever before. Had 

 this increase and spread been allowed to go on in 1897, no 

 doubt the cost of the necessary exterminative work in these 

 woodlands in 1898 would have been greater than that of 

 handling the colonies in all the rest of the infested region, 

 and in fact greater than any annual appropriation which has 

 thus far been granted. 



METHODS OF EXTERMINATION IN WOODLANDS. 

 It was long since proved that the gypsy moth could 

 readily be exterminated from open and cultivated lauds, 

 orchards and shade trees ; it has now been abundantly 

 shown that it can be exterminated from the woods. In 

 forest park lands, where it is not advisable to cut away 

 or burn trees, shrubbery and vines, progress has been 

 necessarily slow ; but in ordinary woodland extermination 

 has progressed more rapidly. In some cases the wood was 

 cut off by the owner, and, after undergoing a sufficient 

 quarantine, was marketed by him. The brush was then 

 burned, the land cleaned up and the ground burned over. 

 In other cases, where the land was sparsely wooded and 

 more or less grown up to underbrush, it was cleared and 

 burned over. Where the land was valuable for prospective 

 building purposes, it was burned over and nearly cleared, 

 leaving a few of the finer shade trees only, thus greatly 

 reducing the number of trees to be afterwards burlapped 

 and inspected. In other cases the number of trees was 



