whole vol. applied entomology howard ii5 



The Striking Events of the Last Decade of the 

 Nineteenth Century 



Followfng very soon after the establishment of Agricultural Ex- 

 periment Stations in the United States as the result of the so-called 

 Hatch Act passed by the Federal Government in 1888 and the almost 

 simultaneous founding of the Association of Economic Entomolo- 

 gists, there occurred four events which fixed the attention of the 

 whole country upon the importance of entomological work. The first 

 of these was the discovery of the gipsy moth in Massachusetts in 

 1889; the second was the discovery of the San Jose scale in the East 

 in 1893 ; the third was the discovery of the Mexican cotton boll 

 weevil in Texas in 1894; and the fourth was the discovery by Ross in 

 1898 of the carriage of malaria by Anopheles. The first three were 

 events apparently then of importance to the United States only ; the 

 last was of great importance to all humanity. 



the gipsy moth 



It very often happens that injurious insects, coming from abroad, 

 obtain a foothold in the United States in some way that we are not 

 exactly able to explain. We may know in a general way that it has 

 come in in the course of commerce in plants or plant products, as 

 was undoubtedly the case with the Japanese beetle and the European 

 corn borer, or in the straw packing about fragile imported packages, 

 as may have been the case with the alfalfa weevil. 



But with the gipsy moth it seems rather certain that it was brought 

 over from Europe in the egg stage to assist in a scientific experiment 

 that a French astronomer, employed in the Harvard Observatory, 

 was carrying on in the cross-breeding of certain silk-producing cater- 

 pillars in the hope of establishing a race that would be resistant to the 

 pebrine disease which was at that time threatening the destruction 

 of the silk industry in France. This man, Leopold Trouvelot, im- 

 ported egg-masses of the gipsy moth from Europe where this insect 

 had long been known as a destructive enemy to forest trees. By some 

 accident, the insects escaped from his laboratory and established them- 

 selves in waste land in Medford near his house. This was in 1869. 

 He notified the scientific public, but nothing was seen of the gipsy 

 moth, which remained, however, gradually increasing, on this waste 

 land until 1889 when a tremendous plague of caterpillars almost over- 

 whelmed the little town. The numbers were so enormous that the 

 trees were completely stripped of their leaves, the crawling cater- 

 pillars covered the sidewalks, the trunks of the shade trees, the 

 fences and the sides of the houses, entering the houses and getting 



