1906 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 19 



on 40,000 egg masses, but the Parks and Ferries Committee of the city council 

 took alarm. Here were no less than one hundred good dollars slipping 

 through their fingers to a purely disinterested society, and being honestly 

 expended for the good of the city without the slightest chance of patronage 

 on their part — which was, of course, intolerable. So they demanded the 

 money, and took over the campaign themselves, withdrawing the bounty, 

 and, instead, putting men to work with poles with tin triangles on the ends 

 to scrape the cocoons off the trees and let them lie where they fell. 



A certain amount of scraping was, of course, done, but I doubt if we 

 got more than |50.00 worth for the |100.00 expended. The work was begun 

 late, and done much too leisurely, and had it not been that the eggs were 

 unusually late in hatching, would have been even less effective than it was. 



In spite, however, of the inefficiency of the work, no very serious damage 

 resulted. A few isolated trees were stripped of their leaves, and a good 

 many trees had at least a part of their foliage rendered pretty ragged, but 

 a very large number of trees were hardly affected at all. 



In the grounds about the house where I live there are many trees — silver 

 maples, elms, horse chestnut, butternut, black cherry — and a careful search 

 early in the season only resulted in my finding two egg masses and one fe- 

 male cocoon from which the imago had never emerged. This was removed 

 from the tree'and placed in a glass-bottomed pill box, and later there emerged 

 from it over a hundred parasites which, on being submitted to Dr. Ashmead, 

 were pronounced Diglochis omnivora, Walker, which I was informed was not 

 previously known to be a parasite of Orgyia LeucostigTna. 



Before the time for the eggs to hatch, I selected a few cocoons with 

 typical egg masses, and immersed them for about ten minutes in gasoline, 

 which I thought would kill the eggs, intending later to place one of them 

 with an inflated larva with the moths in my collection. Fortunately, I did 

 not do so at the time, as I found later that many of the larvae had hatched, 

 though perhaps some of the eggs were killed by the gasoline bath. 



As the caterpillars of the Tussock moth matured and the damage to the 

 trees became quite evident, the city fathers took alarm for fear there might 

 be a second brood which would be much more destructive than the first, but 

 they were assured by the official entomologist that there was no danger of 

 that. There must, nevertheless, have been a few eggs which hatched, as 

 Mr. Winn reported seeing^ a few days ago nearly mature larvae crawling 

 around, and a newly emerged female ovipositing. The numbers were, how- 

 ever, too insignificant to cause any further appreciable damage. 



A Bank manager, knowing the nature of my business, applied to me for 

 a "prescription" to clear out the pest from his trees, but when I told him 

 that it was never possible to exterminate an insect pest, that all we could do 

 was to control it, and recommended careful, hard and continuous work in 

 removing the egg masses from his trees, I am afraid that he thought that 

 there was not much good in entomology. 



The Parks and Ferries Committee decided to apply to the Finance Com- 

 mittee for a grant of $500.00 for further work in removing the egg masses 

 this autumn, but I have learned from the Secretary of the former committee 

 that only |200.00 was granted, and that this wholly insufficient grant has 

 been nearly all expended. 



In this matter, however, I think we are likely to derive nearly as much 

 benefit from the action of natural causes as from the efforts of man. Pro- 

 bably owing to the frequent rains, bacterial disease broke out among the 

 caterpillars when approaching maturity, and many were seen hanging limp 

 and rotten from this cause. 



