98 Bulletin 187. 



year the caterpillars appeared in excessive numbers and ravaged 

 apple and forest trees in Cumberland county, Maine, and in other 

 parts of New England. Doubtless accounts of this outbreak of the 

 insect appeared in some of the newspapers or other publications of 

 that time, but the first published account which we have been able 

 to find is in the valuable and interesting: book known as Deane's 

 New England Farmer or Georgical Dictionai-y, the second edition 

 published in 1797 (the 1st edition was issued the year preceding the 

 outbreak). Deane briefly describes the caterpillars and their work, 

 and states that the following year there were none to be seen. 



After thus practically disappearing as suddenly as it came, the 

 insect remained in obscurity for the remarkably long period of sixty- 

 two years, or until 1853. As Burnett states, in June, 1853, the 

 caterpillars ^iddenly appeared in great numbers in " the central and 

 eastern portion of New York State ; the adjacent portions of 

 Yermont ; Salisbury and New Haven, Conn. ; and the valley of 

 the Connecticut and Housatonic Rivers ; New Boston and Keene, 

 N. H. ; Providence, B. I. ; and the northeastern section of Massa- 

 chusetts. I notice these places or localities particularly, since the 

 devastations were there very marked ; and in some of them the 

 worms not only ate the leaves of the trees, but afterwards devoured 

 the young fruit. In some places they have made such a complete 

 sweep that the orchards look as though a fearful blight had passed 

 over them. I have made considerable search to learn if they have 

 been particularly numerous in their original and former locality, 

 Cumberland county. Me., but I have been able to obtain no informa- 

 tion from that quarter." So serious and widespread was this out- 

 break of the insect in 1853 that it was noticed in the newspapers 

 everywhere from Maine to Connecticut, and Harris and Fitch then 

 contributed about all the economic literature we liave on the insect. 



Fitch states that in New York " the trees everywhere assumed a 

 brown, withered appearance, looking as though they had been 



It is not improbable that the palmer- worm may have appeared in injurious 

 numbers in New England previous to 1791. But there is such confusion in the 

 use of popular names of insects and so little descriptive material in the eaily 

 annals, that we have been unable to glean any definite evidence of an earlier 

 outbreak. 



