4o6 



The Moths and Butterflies 



dispar, a European species brought to Massachusetts in 1868, and from 

 1890 to I goo fought at the public expense. A gentleman living in Med- 

 ford, a town of Massachusetts, imported a number of different kinds of Euro- 

 pean silk-spinning caterpillars in an attempt to find some species which 

 might be bred in this country in place of the mulberry silkworm {Bombyx 

 mori). Some of the moths escaped from his breeding-cages, and among 

 them some gypsy-moths. In a very few years the species had increased to 

 such numbers and spread throughout such an extent of woods that it seri- 

 ously threatened the destruction of all the forest- and shade-trees in north- 

 eastern Massachusetts. By 1891 it was causing great injury to forest-trees 

 over 200 square miles. So far it has been confined because of the whole- 

 sale operations against it. The State has employed as many as 570 men 

 at a time in spraying, egg-collecting, trunk-banding, etc., in the great fight 



Fig. 589. — The California oak-worm moth, Pliryganidia caHjornica. A, eggs on leaf; 

 B, just-hatched larva ; C, full-grown larva ; D, pupa, or chr\-salid ; E, moth ; F, Pimpla 

 behrendsii, parasite of the larva. {B, much enlarged; D and F, twice natural size; 

 others natural size.) 



against the pest and up to 1900 had expended over a million dollars in the 

 struggle. The caterpillar when full grown is i\ inches long, creamy white, 

 thickly sprinkled with black, with dor.'ial and lateral tufts of long black and 

 yellowish hairs. The cocoon is very slight, merely a few silky threads. The 

 male moths, expanding ij to 2 inches, are brownish yellow with smoky fore 

 wings bearing darker irregular transverse lines and pale hind wings with 

 darker outer margins. The females are large, expanding 2^ inches, and 

 creamy white in color, with irregular transverse gray or blackish lines. 



