I04 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



diflferent towns. This is by far the cheaper method of handUng 

 the work by the towns, both for the gypsy and brown-tail 

 moths. With a high power spraying machine in each town the 

 work can be done much more satisfactorily than by any other 

 methods. These same high power machines which usually 

 have a tank capacity of 400 gallons and a sufficient power to 

 maintain a pressure of 300 pounds at the end of a 1,500 foot 

 length of I inch hose, can be used to great advantage by the 

 towns for fires, both in the woodlands and in the residential 

 sections. They can be adjusted to spray directly from the 

 brook, pond or tank, so that they are adaptable for service 

 when other equipment would be useless. 



In the orchard the gypsy moth is readily controlled by paint- 

 ing the egg masses with creosote in winter and by spraying the 

 trees with arsenate of lead, 5 pounds to 50 gallons of water, in 

 the early spring when the eggs are hatching. Where this is 

 done very little trouble results from the caterpillars. 



THE WORK OF THE YEAR. 



Owing to the lateness of the appropriation, which caused 

 delay in starting the work in the field, it was impossible to 

 cover more than a small portion of the infested region, but an 

 attempt was made to destroy as many egg clusters as possible 

 in the towns of Kittery, York, Eliot, South Berwick, Wells 

 and Kennebunk before the caterpillars began to crawl. Crews 

 were started in these towns on the first of April and the scout- 

 ing continued until the eggs hatched. It did not seem wise to 

 expend too much of our appropriation in scouting new terri- 

 tory while in the towns mentioned above there was an oppor- 

 tunity to destroy egg clusters by the hundreds of thousands, 

 and thus relieve the people of such towns from caterpillar an- 

 noyance and great damage to woodlands and orchards as weH 

 as to lessen the liability of spread to the other towns to the 

 eastward. 



As soon as the eggs hatched and the caterpillars began to 

 crawl spraying was begmi and continued until the latter part of 

 July with excellent results. In the spraying operations we 

 used eight and one-half tons of arsenate of lead and millions 

 of caterpillars were destroyed. As soon as the brown-tail had 



