18M.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 59 



Mr. Rawson. They attack nearly all trees, although 

 they are more common on apple trees. They will go into 

 any kind of a tree that has got a hole in it, and lay their 

 eggs in the hole, and we cannot get at them until they come 

 out in the spring. We are stopping the holes up at the 

 present time with cement. The gypsy moths came from 

 Germany nineteen years ago. The gentleman who brought 

 them over thought he might improve the silk worm by cross 

 breeding with this creature. He did not succeed, and they 

 escaped from him. That was in the eastern part of Medford, 

 and the territory near where he lived has been entirely 

 stripped of leaves for the last four or five years. A gentle- 

 man who lived in the next house to the man who brought 

 the gypsy moths here told me that he had not had a leaf 

 on his trees for five years past, but this year his trees were 

 covered with leaves, and bore a fair crop of fruit. We 

 sprayed his trees three times. 



The Chairman. Will Mr. Rawson describe the gypsy 

 moths, so that we can know them when they are in our 

 midst? 



Mr. Rawson. The caterpillar is about two inches long, 

 and half an inch thick when it attains to its full size. It has 

 a brown color, with five red spots on the spine of the back, 

 and it has sixteen feet or legs. They crawl something like 

 the canker-worm, only they do not arch their backs up quite 

 so much. The female moth is light colored, the male is a 

 dark brown and has two horns. The females only live from 

 twelve to twenty-four hours after they come out from the 

 shell. They do not fly about, but lay their eggs and then 

 die. The males fly and seek the females. The eggs are 

 just about as large as the head of a pin. There are from 

 three to five hundred of them in every nest. 



Question. What is the size of the moth that does the 

 mischief ? 



Mr. Rawson. The caterpillar is the one that does the 

 eating. The moth does not eat at all. I should say the 

 size of the moth was about an inch long, and when 

 the wings are spread out it is about an inch and a half 

 across . 



Mr. Fitch. When are the eggs laid? 



