﻿OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 25 



■history was first made known to the world, and the parent moth iden- 

 tified. 



"The very earliest record which we find of its appearance in this 

 country is in Flint's 2nd Report on the Agriculture of Massachusetts, 

 where it is stated that in 1743 ' there were millions of devouring 

 worms in armies, threatening to cut off every green thing.' 



/'In 1770 it spread over New England in alarming numbers. Dr. 

 Fitch in his 6lh Report quotes the following full and interesting ac- 

 count from the Rev. Grant Power's Historical Sketches of the Coos 

 Country in the Northern part of New Hampshire. 'In the summer of 

 1770 an army of worms extended from Lancaster, the shire town of 

 ■Coos county, N. H., to Northfield, Mass., almost the whole length of 

 the Granite State. They began to appear the latter part of July, and 

 continued their ravages until September. They were then called the 

 * Northern Army,' as they seemed to advance from the north or north- 

 west to the south. It was not known that they passed the highlands 

 between the rivers Connecticut and Merrimack. Dr. Burton, of 

 Thetford, Vermont, informed the author that he had seen the pastures 

 so covered with them, that he could not put down his finger without 

 touching a worm, remarking that ' he had seen more than ten bushels 

 in a heap.' They were unlike anything that generation had ever 

 seen. There wab a stripe upon the back like black velvet, and on 

 each side a stripe of yellow irom end to end, and the rest of the body 

 was brown. They were seen not larger than a pin, but in maturity 

 were as long as a man's finger and of proportionate thickness. They 

 appeared to be in great haste, except when they halted to feed. They 

 ■entered the houses of the people and came up into the kneading 

 troughs as did the frogs in Egypt. They went up the sides of the 

 houses and over them in such compact columns that nothing of the 

 boards or shingles could be seen. Pumpkin-vines, peas, potatoes and 

 flax escaped their ravages. But wheat and corn disappeared before 

 them as by magic. Fields of corn in the Haverhill and Newbury 

 meadows, so thick that a man could hardly be seen a rod distant, 

 were in ten days entirely defoliated by the ' Northern Army.' 

 Trenches were dug around fields a foot deep, as a defence, but they 

 were soon filled and the millions in the rear passed on and took pos- 

 session of the interdicted feed. Another expedient was resorted to: 

 Trenches were cut, and thin sticks, six inches in diameter, were sharp- 

 ened and used to make holes in the bottom of the trenches within 

 two or three feet of one another, to the depth of two or three feet in 

 the bottom lands, and when these holes were filled with worms, the 

 stick was plunged into the holes, thus destroying the vermin. In this 

 way some corn was saved. About the first of September -the worms 



