TIIK (ivi'sv MOTH. ir> 



the Colorado potato hectics in this State alone amounts to 

 s7ii,(i>0 annually, --a sum equal to about one twenty-tiff li 

 of the value of the crop: and this has continued for many 

 years, with every prospect that it will go on indefinitely. 

 If, then-fore, it costs one twenty-fifth of the value of the 

 potato crop to apply an insecticide to protect it from the 

 ravages of ihe Colorado potato beetle, who can deny that it 

 will co-t <|iiite as large a proportion of the value of all the 

 \ enviable products of the farms, orchards, gardens and for- 

 ests, which the gypsy moth will attack, to protect them from 

 the ravages of this omnivorous pest? The value of these 

 products in this State for the year 1<SX;"), as given in the 

 State census, is $26,497,202, and one twenty-fifth of this 

 sum is more than $1,000,000. It should be remembered 

 that the cost of applying an insecticide to a low-growing 

 plant like the potato is far less than would be that of its 

 application to fruit and forest trees or grass and grain fields. 

 In thex- estimates no account has been taken of ornamental 

 trees and shrubs in this Commonwealth, for the reason that 

 I have no means of learning the number or value of these. 

 Their estimated value would depend largely upon their loca- 

 tion. Those in city parks have a far greater value than 

 those along the sides of country roads. Professor Liutuer, 

 State entomologist of New York, informs me that the Sara- 

 toga elms are insured at $500 each. 



If the work of exterminating the gypsy moth should be 

 abandoned by the State, this insect, alreadv infesting some 

 of the metropolitan parks, would surely spread not only to 

 all of the parks belonging to this system but to all of those in 

 the metropolitan region. In this case one of two things 

 would follow : either the trees and shrubs of all the parks 

 of the region would be abandoned to these voracious insects, 

 to be stripped of their foliage, leaving them as bare and un- 

 -ightly as in winter; or else there would be a perpetual war 

 against them by park commissioner-. 



I have no data from which to estimate what the cost of 

 such work would be, but even a superficial survey of the 

 problem would very ijiiickly convince one that it would be 

 enormous. If every tree and shrub in the parks of the en- 

 tire metropolitan system must be sprayed with an insecticide 



