116 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 4 



New England is now well known. Throughout the infested districts 

 of New England orchards have been completely destroyed and forests 

 obliterated, arid even where woodlands and parks have been pro- 

 tected at enormous expense, their beauty and value have been vastly 

 lessened. 



As elsewhere indicated, the United States Government is now spend- 

 ing $300,000 a year in a mere attempt to check the rapidity of the 

 distribution or dissemination of these pests, and the New England 

 States affected are now spending more than a million dollars a year 

 in efforts at local control. Extermination is entirely out of the ques- 

 tion, and all these expenditures must go on indefinitely at a probably 

 increasing rate, unless some check by natural means, such as that by 

 parasites, can be brought about. When it is realized that these two 

 pests have been distributed on imported nursery stock throughout 

 23 states during the last two years, the danger to the whole country 

 is evident, and this danger applies to every orchard and to every 

 nursery, and to every owner of private grounds, and also to our entire 

 forest domain. 



The actual value of the importations of nursery stock which are 

 thus jeopardizing the entire fruit and forest interests of this country 

 is comparatively small, although doubtless important from the stand- 

 point of the nurseryman. It consists, for the most part, of seedling 

 stock, — apple, pear, plum, cherry and ornamentals. The value, as 

 declared for customs, of such importations during each of the years 

 1907 and 1908, of which we have tabulated records, amount to about 

 $350,000, practically the sum which the United States Government 

 is expending annually in endeavoring to limit the spread of the gypsy 

 and brown-tail moths in Massachusetts, and one-third the sum which 

 the New England States are expending annuallj' in attempting to 

 control these pests. 



The stock of the last two years which has been most infested has 

 come from northern France, accumulated from various smaller or 

 larger nurseries, including a French seedling agency managed by an 

 American corporation, composed largely of New York nurserymen. 

 Of the stock imported from these districts, some of it, on the state- 

 ment of the nurserymen, which is not to be questioned, is much 

 better than similar stock grown in this country. This applies par- 

 ticularly to pears, cherries, plums and quinces. Apple seedlings, up 

 to a few years ago, have been largely of American growth. The estab- 

 lishment of this French-American company and the growth of foreign 

 importations has resulted in a great deal of such stock being now 

 obtained from France. Mr. F. W. Watson, of Topeka, Kan., in an 

 article in the National Nurseryman for January, 1910, page 437, on 



