1907.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT No. 73. 121 



agricultural and other colleges were employed, but the main 

 operations have been cared for by Messrs. Titus and Mosher. 

 The conscientious efforts of these men are worthy of all praise, 

 particularly their courage and faithfulness in continuing day 

 after day the work of caring for over 100,000 brown-tail moth 

 webs, with the consequent bodily suffering caused by the highly 

 poisonous insects. Dr. Howard's report is given below : - 



UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 

 BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY, WASHINGTON, D. C., Nov. 24, 1906. 



Mr. A. H. KIRKLAND, Superintendent for Suppressing the Gypsy and 



Brown-tail Moths, 6 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. 

 SIR: I have the honor to submit a brief report of my efforts dur- 

 ing the period since I submitted my last report to you, on Dec. 30, 1905, 

 to import the foreign parasites of the gypsy and brown-tail moths into 

 Massachusetts. 



Respectfully yours, L. 0. HOWARD, 



Chief of Bureau. 



I stated in my last report to you that, on the strength of information 

 received from Professor Jablonowski of Budapest, concerning the oc- 

 currence of minute parasites in winter nests of the brown-tail moth, I 

 had secured the sending over to Massachusetts of a number of nests of 

 the brown-tail moth from different parts of Europe, in the hope that 

 there might be bred from them near Boston in the spring of 1906 an 

 abundant supply of these parasites. As you are aware, and as you 

 will probably state in your individual report to the Senate and the 

 House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, more 

 than 117,000 winter nests of the brown-tail moth were sent to you 

 before spring by the paid agents I had engaged in Europe, and by 

 voluntary correspondents with whom I had made arrangements. It is 

 worthy of note that a large number of the nests (several thousands) 

 were sent in through the efforts of Mr. Rene Oberthiir of Rennes, 

 France, whose interest became engaged in the work from the published 

 account of an address which I delivered before the Entomological 

 Society of France in June, 1905. These nests were cared for, as you 

 are well aware, in the parasite laboratory at North Saugus, by one of 

 your assistants, Mr. Mosher. 



In March, 1906, I detailed one of my expert assistants, Mr. E. S. G. 

 Titus, a man who had been trained in the best methods of breeding in- 

 sects and in the care of parasites, and who possesses an expert knowl- 

 edge of the different groups of parasitic Hymenoptera, to accompany 

 me to Boston and to examine into the condition of the hibernating nests, 

 which, by the way, had purposely been selected from every part of 



