STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 43 



them. They hibernate in the egg through the winter and that 

 is why they will be difficult to find. The moth lays the eggs a 

 Httle later than the brown-tail, but hides them away. She can- 

 not fly. I have watched probably thousands of them to see if 

 they could fly. I was in Massachusetts during the old commis- 

 sion, — I was teaching there at the time and knew something of 

 the work there, and I have watched them many times. Before 

 they lay their eggs they are so heavy with eggs that they cannot 

 fly practically. I have seen them try to crawl up a tree and 

 almost invariably they would lose ground and come down rather 

 than ascend. They lay about five hundred eggs ; and so of 

 course they would not spread as rapidly. While these brown- 

 tail moths might — I won't say they would, but I don't see any 

 reason why they couldn't fly ten miles before they stopped to 

 lay their eggs if the wind was in the right direction. So there is 

 that difference between them. One other thing I will just 

 mention in regard to this brown-tail moth, you have heard so 

 much of it. Wlhy they took such active measures in the town 

 of York was because of the resorts there, York Beach and York 

 Harbor, that received lots of letters from parties out of the State 

 inquiring about the brown-tail and saying that they were going 

 to take their summer vacation in other directions if the brown- 

 tail was here. So the people in York realized what it would 

 mean to them to have their summer visitors go somewhere else 

 and they took the active measures they did. There were a 

 number of cases though of this brown-tail itch, as it is termed. 

 When those caterpillars reach the stage of moults, the skins that 

 they shed, — the hairs have a property of breaking up and work- 

 ing under the skin if they come in contact with the body, and 

 producing a very annoying irritation, puffing up, in many cases 

 worse than any ivy poison, and of course that is what they 

 dread. I know that families move out from infested districts 

 in Massachusetts during that time of the year, and families that 

 were not used to going away from home were obliged to on 

 account of that. 



Prof. Munson: One question I would like to ask Prof. 

 Hitchings. I heard no reference made to the oyster-shell bark 

 louse, and in some sections of the State I would ask if that is 

 not nearly as serious a pest as the San Jose scale? 



Prof. Hitchings: It is. I had a case reported to me. A 

 gentleman wrote saying that his orchard was dying — his young 



