144 (IVPSV AND BROWN-TAIL MOTHS. [Jan. 



use of power outfits and the free movement of ladders and 

 hose. Furthermore, the use of burlap on the trees is often as 

 desirable as spraying; and to burlap and attend the trees in 

 the average woodland is infinitely more expensive and less 

 effective than where proper thinning operations have been car- 

 ried on. 



The first step, then, in clearing woodlands of the moth 

 is to reduce the number of trees per acre, so as to permit of 

 economical work and to give the remainder the best conditions 

 of growth. In general, it may be said that pines and chestnuts 

 require less ground space than oaks or other trees of natural 

 broad expanse of limb. The method followed in all cases has 

 been first to cut the brush and other low growths. This, though 

 destroying for a season the ground cover, and with it many 

 seedling trees, is necessary to force the insects to the larger 

 trees remaining. Next, all dead, diseased, misshapen and 

 crowded trees are cut. The dead or diseased tree is value- 

 less except for firewood, and often not for that, and it fre- 

 quently harbors gypsy moth nests by the hundred. A lop-sided 

 or deformed tree is equally worthless, yet affords feeding ground 

 for caterpillars and nesting places for the moths. 



Nearly all our hard-wood forests consist of sprout growth, - 

 the surviving suckers which have sprung from stumps of former 

 trees. Cut an oak or chestnut to-day and next season one finds 

 ten, twenty or fifty little sprouts pushing their way upward 

 and struggling year by year for light and life. In the course 

 of ten or fifteen years but eight or ten of these survive, and 

 this number is gradually reduced until at the end of twenty 

 or twenty-five years but three or four remain. This clump of 

 sprout trees is worth little in comparison with a single sound 

 tree, as any lumberman knows. To facilitate our work, as 

 well as to benefit the future forest, the weaker trees in such 

 clumps are cut and the strongest specimens left. This in gen- 

 eral is the practice we have followed. It results in leaving only 

 the best and soundest trees, thus being a. direct benefit to the 

 owner of the woodland, and at, the same time clearing up the 

 woods so that future operations against the moth may be ear- 

 ned on economically and effectively. In all thinning opera- 



