204 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



until the Legislature of 1895 should decide, by the amount of 

 money appropriated, the policy to be pursued for the present 

 year. The Board of Agriculture had recommended the appro- 

 priation of $200,000, "if the work is to be carried on under 

 the present statute and the policy of extermination is to be 

 continued." The Legislature appropriated $150,000, three- 

 quarters of the sum recommended, but made no change in the 

 statute. This appropriation did not become available until 

 May 17, 1895, at which date the eggs of the moth had nearly 

 all hatched and the caterpillars were beginning their work. 

 All the experienced men discharged, whom it was possible to 

 re-engage, were at once set at work, but, as has been the case 

 several times in the past under like circumstances, many of 

 them had obtained other employment, and their places were 

 necessarily filled with inexperienced men, who had to learn to 

 do the work required before they could be useful or reliable. 

 The work of inspection and egg-destroying, stopped in the 

 first week of February, could not be resumed because the 

 caterpillars demanded attention. The territory that should 

 have been cleared of eggs during the late winter and early 

 spring had now to be cared for at increased expense, by spray- 

 ing and burlapping the trees for the caterpillars. New men 

 were engaged and set at work as fast as they could be ex- 

 amined and instructed, until there were three hundred and 

 sixty-four names on the pay roll. The condition of the forest 

 lands, more than fifty square miles in extent, which has been 

 repeatedly reported as an unknown quantity in the work of 

 extermination, and which the investigation of 1894 showed in 

 part to be very serious, has been more thoroughly looked into, 

 and the fears of the committee have proved well founded. At 

 least three thousand acres of woodland are now known to be in- 

 fested. Many places, some of them of considerable area, have 

 been found to be infested, some of them to such an extent that 

 the trees were entirely stripped of leaves. In some places dis- 

 covered during the eating season the caterpillars were found 

 in enormous quantities, covering the trees and bushes and also 

 the ground under them. Every possible effort warranted by 

 the size of the appropriation was made to destroy the cater- 

 pillars at the time, except in a few places discovered near the 

 end of the feeding season. In these places they were allowed 



