REPORT OF FIELD AGENT, GYPSY MOTH WORK. IO9 



REPORT OF SPECIAL FIELD AGENT IN CHARGE OF 

 GYPSY MOTH WORK. 



Hon. W. T. Guptill, Commissioner of Agriculture: 



Sir: I herewith submit my first annual report as special 

 field agent in charge of the gypsy moth work. 



In every generation there appears a personality or an indi- 

 vidual existence that creates an epoch or formulates an era; 

 this is true in all life, plant or animal. Each constitutes a 

 force that sometimes deals with the serious problems of life 

 and again it becomes a vital spark that flares, flashes and 

 threatens to destroy the industrial problems of communities. 



Every community has its individual aspect, either adorned 

 by nature, or enhanced and beautified by man. The greatest 

 beauty and best asset which any community can boast, is 

 shapely trees, with a profusion of luxuriant foliage. Nothing 

 is more forbidding to the sight than ill shaped trees, with a 

 scanty bearing of thin, ragged, skeletonized leaves, that afford 

 neither beauty nor shade, standing only as a disgrace to the 

 premises on which it grows. Nothing is more worthy of our 

 care, no expense too great to protect and preserve them from 

 the destruction which today threatens both our shade and fruit 

 trees with the devastation and ravages of the gypsy moth. 



I will not summarize this report with a digest on the life 

 history and habits of the moth in this country. Its introduc- 

 tion, habits and spread have been so repeatedly told through 

 the columns of the public press and public platforms that I 

 deem it superfluous to this report. However, it is well to 

 mention a few incidents connected with the ravages and de- 

 vastation of the pest, in the old country, especially in Southern 

 Europe and Asia. All the writers on European entomology 

 state that it is replete with the destruction caused by the gypsy 

 moth ; and when authenticated by the records of such notable 

 and eminent entomologists as herein given, there can be no 



