WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD II7 



that sort at that time. Appropriations were small and were hard to 

 get. The economical New Englanders were tired of the expensive 

 fight, and it is hard to blame them. Knowing what we do now, it 

 would seem that the Federal Bureau of Entomology might fairly be 

 blamed for lack of foresight in not warning Congress and the other 

 States of the great danger and in not appealing to Congress for funds 

 with which to prosecute radical work. As I look back, the idea seems 

 never to have occurred to us. It seemed to us a State matter which 

 Massachusetts could handle if she would. There is no doubt that 

 prior to 1901 large areas had been so carefully gone over by State 

 forces that the gipsy moth was exterminated locally, and we argued 

 that if this could be done over a number of square miles it could 

 be done over 400 square miles then occupied by the insect. 



All this is now, however, vain speculation. The insect has spread 

 gradually, and for a very large part its commercial spread in great 

 jumps has been prevented by quarantine and inspection. Such com- 

 mercial jumps have occurred, however, in one case as far as Ohio, and 

 in several cases in New York. All, however, have been discovered in 

 time, and vigorous work has exterminated the insect, except in a 

 large New Jersey outbreak which is only now being reduced to such 

 an extent that successful extermination seems a matter of a very few 

 years. This last case by the way was not a commercial jump, but 

 undoubtedly a direct accidental importation from Europe. 



But the other New England States have all been invaded, and all 

 of them have passed legislation compelling community and individual 

 work. The Federal Government has occupied itself along the bound- 

 ary of spread in the effort to hold the pest in check. In the interior, 

 the States have lieen supposed to control destructive outbreaks. At 

 the present time both New York State and the Federal Government 

 are holding it back along a line extending from Canada to Long Island 

 Sound (virtually the Valley of the Hudson River) which has been 

 termed a " Hindenburg line." 



Some years after the gipsy moth was discovered in Massachusetts 

 another European pest, the brown-tail moth, was found to have been 

 imported in its winter webs on rose bushes from Holland and to 

 have become thoroughly established ; and the study of this insect and 

 its treatment was included with the gipsy moth work carried on by 

 the State. The brown-tail moth, however, after a comparatively few 

 years proved not to spread so rapidly as the gipsy moth, and to be 

 so easily handled by the cutting and burning of its conspicuous weljs 

 during the winter time, and moreover was so readily attacked by 



