STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 4 1 



You notice the dots on the end, golden brown color, the cover- 

 ing- of the egg cluster, right on the end of the leaf. When the 

 moth lays the eggs they are white but while she is laying them 

 the hairs pull out from the abdomen onto these sticky eggs and 

 cover the whole cluster of eggs, as you will see in that little case 

 that is being passed. And those are the caterpillars in there. 

 They are live caterpillars and simply hibernate in that form 

 through the winter upon the trees where you can get at them 

 easily — it is your own fault if you don't cut them down if they 

 are in your section, — and early in the spring they are all ready 

 to go to work on the trees the moment the buds start enough to 

 give them a chance to get something to eat — you must know they 

 would be hungry after they have slept all winter. We had 

 them crawling and eating in Portland in April last year. 



I will give you a few figures. They took in the city of 

 Portland 122,000 nests of the brown-tail moth last spring. In 

 the banner town of the State they took about 200,000 nests, and 

 that was all done in about six weeks' time. The banner town 

 was the town of York. They appropriated more money than 

 any other tow^i — twice over what Portland did — and as a result 

 they got the largest number of nests ; but they didn't get them 

 all. They employed men from Boston to come down and spray 

 for the caterpillars where they didn't get the nests off. One nest 

 overlooked last year would mean from 50 to possibly 150 nests 

 this year. 



Dr. TwiTCHELL: You spoke about finding these nests and 

 cutting them, but you did not emphasize the necessity of burning 

 them. 



Prof. Hitchings : I don't know as I did. Of course you 

 want to cut and burn. I am glad that you spoke of that because 

 we did have men last spring that thought if they cut them and 

 let them down on the ground that that was all that was neces- 

 sary. That would not hinder them very much. In an hour's 

 time, on the first trip to Kittery I made last spring, I found them 

 on thirteen different varieties of trees, and in many places so 

 thick that the trees could not have leafed out possibly. I was 

 there last week. In some places they are thicker than they were 

 last year, for this reason : New Hampshire did nothing prac- 

 tically. All they have to do is to fly across the river, and that 

 is a short distance, and the pear trees there are just loaded, not 

 with pears but with brown-tail moth nests today. 



