February, '17] BURGESS AND GRIFFIN: BANDING MATERIALS 131 



it consumes plants faster than they can grow. A small amount of 

 pruning is no doubt good for the plants, and if the feeding which takes 

 place in two weeks could be distributed through three months it might 

 be very advantageous. Mr. H. S. Smith, who studied the insect in 

 Italy, was of the opinion that that was one of the principal factors in 

 producing the condition in Italy along the seacoast, where the weevil is 

 always present in considerable numbers, but is of no consequence as a 

 pest. Its feeding is distributed through many months instead of a 

 few weeks. 



President C. Gordon Hewitt: I will now call for a paper by Mr. 

 A. F. Burgess and Mr. E. L. Grifiin. 



A NEW TREE BANDING MATERIAL FOR THE CONTROL OF 

 THE GIPSY MOTH 



By A. F. Burgess and E. L. Griffin. i 



About the year 1896, when the gipsy moth work in Massachusetts 

 was in charge of the State Board of Agriculture, a small quantity of a 

 product known as Raupenleim was imported from Germany to use for 

 banding tree trunks to prevent caterpillars from reaching the foliage. 

 The results with this material proved to be of enough value so that an 

 attempt was made during the following year to manufacture it in a 

 small way in this country. The material was of a greasy nature and 

 was applied to the tree trunk with a trowel, the upper part of the band 

 being thinner than the lower edge. The results with the substitute 

 which was prepared in this country were not very satisfactory, par- 

 ticularly because the object of the work at that time was the exter- 

 mination of the moth, and although banding was not very expensive, 

 it was found that more caterpillars could be destroyed in a given area 

 by using burlap and crushing the caterpillars that congregated beneath 

 it. 



When the gipsy moth work was resumed by the State of Massachu- 

 setts in 1905, the question of banding trees was a very important one. 

 By that time tree tanglefoot had come into use and it was adopted 

 as a satisfactory material for banding purposes and has since been used 

 in large quantities throughout the infested area. 



In 1909, Dr. L. 0. Howard, while in Europe, secured a small order 

 of Raupenleim from a German factory and shipped it to this country. 



' The testing of the material was carried out by the Gipsy Moth Laboratory and 

 field force of the Bureau of Entomology, while the analyses were made and material 

 prepared at the Insecticide Laboratory, Bureau of Chemistry, U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture. 



