164 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 84 



111 1905 the Federal Government entered upon the gipsy moth work. 

 It seems a i)ity now that the government did not take hold at the 

 start, for surely the gipsy moth might have been exterminated in the 

 United States in the early iSqo's. But we thought that the State of 

 Massachusetts could and would do it. Again, when the State stopped 

 its appropriations in 1900 the Federal Government should have taken 

 it up. After a study of the situation in 1897, -'■ ^'^'^ concluded (see Bul- 

 letin II, new series, Bureau of Entomology) that extermination was 

 not far distant. However, this was not done, and in 1905, when appro- 

 priations began to be made to the Bureau for this purpose, the insect 

 had spread from a confined territory of 400 square miles to a range of 

 4,000 square miles. From that time Federal Government approi)ri- 

 ations increased rather rapidly for a number of years, and during the 

 later years there has been a constant appropriation of large sums of 

 money, not for extermination, but distinctly in the effort to prevent 

 spread. The gipsy moth has become well established over the greater 

 part of New England, and is there considered principally on the basis 

 of a native pest, the States themselves assuming its control while the 

 Federal Government is trying to prevent its spread into New York 

 and regions further west. 



But the people and the government were becoming more and more 

 aware of the possibilities of very great loss by insects, and pressure 

 on Congress was having increased efTect. New problems concerning 

 native insects, like the plum curculio and the peach-tree borer, were 

 arising, as well as new problems concerning well established insects 

 from vastly older importation dates, like the Hessian fly and the 

 codling moth. 



Moreover, other dangerous and new pests made their appearance. 

 In 1906 it began to be evident that a leaf -hopper was causing the 

 disastrous curly-leaf disease of sugar beets. In 1909 it appeared that 

 the Argentine ant, accidentally imported some years before, was 

 becoming a very serious matter. During the same year it was found 

 that an imported insect known as the alfalfa weevil had begun to 

 cause great damage to the alfalfa crops in Utah and had begun to 

 spread. In 191 2 the passage of the Federal Horticultural Act enabled 

 the country for the first time to take adequate measures against the 

 introduction of the Mediterranean fruit-fly, and investigations were 

 begun in Hawaii. In 191 7 two serious imported pests were found, 

 the European corn borer in Massachusetts and the Japanese beetle in 

 New Jersey. In the same year the ]\Iexican bean beetle proved itself 

 very injurious in Colorado and New Mexico, and in 1920 it was re- 

 ported from Alabama, from which ])lace it spread rapidly to the north. 



