58 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



the gypsy moth?" Mr. Rawson, I think, can answer that 

 question better than any one else. 



Mr. W. W. Rawson of Arlington. It is rather early in 

 the day to answer that question, as the commission have had 

 only the experience of a part of one season. When the 

 commissioners were appointed last March, onty one of them 

 had had any experience with the gypsy moth. We have 

 gone on experimenting this season so far, and are at work at 

 present destroying the eggs as fast as possible. The eggs 

 are in secluded places, under the eaves of houses, in holes in 

 old rotten trees, and underneath the branches. We have 

 now about forty men at work hunting them out and destroy- 

 ing them. From about the first of May until the first of 

 August we had something over a hundred men, spraying the 

 trees and killing the creatures in that way. The result has 

 been that none of the trees have had the leaves eaten off 

 of them as they had in the preceding seasons. We took as 

 the basis of our experiments the experience of the Agricult- 

 ural Experiment Station at Amherst, or of the professors 

 there, in spraying trees with Paris green. We asked and 

 secured, as many of you know, an appropriation of $50,000. 

 We shall have expended at the end of the year about $30,000 

 of that appropriation. I do not think we shall require so 

 large an appropriation another season. We have thoroughly 

 investigated the outskirts, and find only one case where they 

 have gone beyond the limits of our first investigation. The 

 territory that is now covered is about twelve miles long and 

 four miles wide. When we asked for the first appropriation 

 of $25,000, we supposed the moth infested a territory only 

 four miles long and half a mile wide. I think that in the 

 course of fouf or five years, if the State will allow us to go 

 on, we can entirely exterminate the gypsy moth. But it is a 

 continual battle all the year through. There are four stages 

 in which these creatures are found at different seasons of the 

 year, and w( hare had to use different methods of destruction 

 for them in each of these stages. 



The Chairman. This gypsy moth is something that many 

 of us do not know anything about. We do not know how 

 it came to be here. Does it attack all kinds of trees, or only 

 certain trees ? 



