44 



foliage and bore no fruit that year, our orchard remained in full 

 foliage and produced a full crop of fruit. 1 



Mr. B. A. Arnold who, in the summer of 1913, lived at 

 Northeast Harbor, Maine, wrote me that a spruce moth 

 (probably one of the Tortricids) had become quite abundant in 

 that vicinity, so much so that people were beginning to fear 

 the destruction of the spruce woods. He had noticed that the 

 red squirrels which were numerous in the woods were protect- 

 ing the moths by destroying the eggs and young of warblers 

 and other small birds; therefore he had killed off the squirrels 

 on the peninsula on which his cottage was situated and which 

 was connected to the mainland only by a narrow neck of land. 

 Many young warblers were reared on his place, and the birds 



Egg clusters of the cankerworm moth, eaten by chickadees. 



could be seen at all hours of the day hunting their food on the 

 spruces. In a short time the trees were cleared of both worms 

 and moths and the pest was stayed, while on the mainland 

 the defoliation of the trees still continued. 2 



In 1916 and 1917 the groves in the parks at Minot, North 

 Dakota, were attacked by thousands of measuring worms. In 

 1918 Mr. Will O. Doolittle took measures to attract wild birds, 

 which came in numbers and soon freed the trees of the pests. 

 Chickadees, nuthatches and woodpeckers, attracted to the 

 parks, became very tame by constant feeding and atterition, 

 and cedar waxwings, rose-breasted grosbeaks and kingbirds 

 showed particular efficiency in ridding the trees of their insect 

 enemies. 3 



The late Rev. William R. Lord reported on December 1, 

 1913, that the town authorities of Dover, Massachusetts, had 

 been cutting down wild cherry trees because those trees harbored 



1 Annual Report, Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, 1895 (1896), pp. 347-362. 



2 Sixth Annual Report of the State Ornithologist, Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, 

 1913, p. 27. 



3 Oldys, Henry: Current Items of Interest, Audubon Society of the District of Columbia, 

 No. 38, July 1, 1918. 



