192 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
where the Ulster and Delaware railroad sometimes side-track freight 
trains. ‘The caterpillars began their depredations at this railway siding 
and swept up the hill over an area a mile and a half long by half a mile 
wide, taking hard maple, apple, pear, plum, beech, birch, poplar and 
other trees in their destructive course. The nut trees they did not 
attack and strange to say, they left every soft maple in their track 
untouched. 
The caterpillars were also operating in the village on the shade trees, 
and the garden fruit trees, but were not plentiful enough to do much 
damage or cause much comment. 
At Clarks Factory, Delaware county, Mr H. O. Van Benscoten owns 
an extensive sugar orchard of over one hundred acres. It has been 
stripped of its foliage till not one leaf remains. The maple forests, at 
Andes, Grand Gorge, Bush Ridge, and Fleischmanns, Delaware county, 
Prattsville and other points in Greene county have also been stripped of 
foliage. Wherever the caterpillars have appeared they have defoliated 
the apple and fruit orchards. 
The complete and extensive injury is well shown in plates 1-4, which 
were taken by Mr Ingram. 
This year Mr R.G. Smith reported that 125 acres covered with 
maples were defoliated at Russell, St Lawrence county. Severe ravages 
by this species were reported from Lewis county, many timber lots 
appearing as though fire had run through them,.as it was put by a corres- 
pondent of the weather bureau. At Trenton Falls, Oneida county, the 
caterpillars were very numerous in the woods and some trees were nearly 
defoliated. Several observers reported serious injuries by this insect in 
Otsego county, Westford, Decatur and Worcester being localities specially 
mentioned by Mr O. Q. Flint, of Athens, N. Y. A report came to me 
that the forests were stripped by this species in Exeter, and Mr C: F. 
Wheelock, head inspector of the University, informed me that he had 
observed considerable injury to forest trees in the same county. Its 
ravages were noted in Delaware county by Mr Flint at Roxbury and 
Stamford. Many trees were defoliated in Greene county, its operations 
in Lexington and Halcott coming under the observation of Mr Flint and 
those at Tannersville being reported by Miss K. E. Turnbull. The 
abundance and destructiveness of this insect at Glens Falls, Warren 
county, was brought to my attention early in the season by Mr C. L. 
Williams. At Lake George many of the trees on the islands were 
defoliated by this insect, the Canoe islands appearing as though swept 
by fire, according to Mrs J. R. Gilmore. Severe injuries were also 
reported from Vermont both last year and the present season. ‘That the 
actual depredator in cases cited above was always this species, could not 
be determined in every instance by examination of the caterpillars, 
though an effort was made to secure examples whenever practicable, 
