1906.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT No. 73. 9 



outbreak did not extend over more than three or four years ; 

 in other words, at the end of that period the moth was checked 

 by natural causes and its damage subsided. 



THE GYPSY MOTH. 



In 1868 a French scientist, Prof. Leopold Trouvelot, then 

 residing at Medford, Mass., imported egg clusters of the 

 gypsy moth to use in certain experiments with silk-produc- 

 ing insects. The manner in which the moth escaped from 

 his care could not be determined by correspondence with 

 Professor Trouvelot after his return to France, but the late 

 Alvan Clark, the well-known lens maker of Cambridge, who 

 saw Trouvelot at Meudon, France, a short time before his 

 death, was told by him that he had the caterpillars netted in 

 on a shrub in his yard at Medford, and that during a gale 

 the netting was torn and the insects scattered. It is a 

 matter of record that he realized the importance of this 

 catastrophe and promptly notified the public through the 

 entomological magazines of that time. No attention appears 

 to have been paid to this note of warning, and the insect, once 

 becoming established, multiplied with increasing rapidity, 

 until in the late eighties its ravages became notable in certain 

 restricted districts of Medford and Maiden. By 1889 the 

 moth had become so abundant in southern Medford that 

 the trees were completely stripped, and the caterpillars were 

 forced to swarm outward in all directions in search of food. 

 During this year specimens of the insect were sent to the 

 Hatch Experiment Station at Amherst, where, in the absence 

 abroad of Prof. C. H. Fernald, they were identified by his 

 son, Dr. H. T. Fernald, as caterpillars of the notorious gypsy 

 moth of the Old World. 



After a vain struggle with the pest, the citizens of the 

 affected communities petitioned in 1890 for legislation for its 

 extermination, and similar action was taken by the State 

 Board of Agriculture, the Essex County Horticultural Society 

 and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The matter 

 was presented to the Legislature by Governor John Q. A. 

 Brackett, and on March 14, 1890, he approved the first act 

 authorizing work against the moth, and carrying an appro- 



