FOR PROMOTING AGRICULTURE 163 



kept in each case. The outcome of such an investiga- 

 tion would manifestly be of instructive interest to all 

 engaged in problems of practical agriculture, and 

 might disclose facts or laws, a knowledge of which 

 would be of great value to the farmer, and of immedi- 

 ate applicability. The experiments were encouraged 

 by the trustees, by making additional grants of $200 

 in the latter part of 1884, and $100 in 1889. The best 

 apparatus was obtained, and the observations were 

 continued through five years, together with meteoro- 

 logical observations requisite for comparison. The 

 labor of tabulating and collating the facts for adequate 

 scientific deduction, has not yet been completed, but 

 is in progress. 



On November 8, 1889, the trustees took action for 

 an investigation of the gipsy moth, a destructive in- 

 sect which had appeared in West Medford, and $225 

 was voted for printing and distributing in the farming 

 districts, bulletins descriptive of the moth and its 

 habits. Nothing farther was done, it being announced 

 at the next meeting of the trustees, that the State 

 authorities had begun operations for the suppression 

 of the pest. 



Among the minor transactions of the society during 

 the closing ten years of the century, are the advocacy, 

 before committees of the Legislature, of statutes, 

 which eventually were enacted, exempting from taxa- 

 tion for a term of years, new plantations of forest 

 trees, and to prevent the destruction of forests by 

 fires kindled through carelessness or otherwise; the 

 payment during five years, prior to August 31, 1887, 

 of $1,000, annually, to aid the department of the 

 herbarium at the Bussey Institute; in 1884 the sum of 

 $300 to Prof. William G. Farlow, of the Institute, for 

 engravings to illustrate a treatise on rust in grain and 



