20 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1892. 



in restraint of juvenile offenders, why should aught better be 

 expected from the ordinary police-force of municipalities ! 

 Have they not to ape the military and parade as a train-band ! 

 In these days of government by theory, we fare well if we can 

 secure our homesteads from the multifarious inroads of taxation, 

 leaving out of consideration the returns that we might reason- 

 ably anticipate from their cultivation. Confiscation assumes 

 many insidious aspects ; perhaps we ought to be grateful, when 

 it impeaches the title to land, that it has the decency to at least 

 pretend philanthropy. And finallj^ whether we gather our 

 harvest, or it is stolen from us, upon this we can reckon with 

 entire certainty, that mid-autumn will scarcely pass ere our 

 privacy is disturbed by the usual rude irruption, and the annual 

 imperative demand : " How many tickets do you want for the 

 'poUce-baWf" 



This Society ivas invited^ in mid-summer, by the " Massachu- 

 setts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture," to participate 

 in a meeting on August 4th, of delegates to consider the subject 

 of the Tent Caterpillar ; presumably its ravages and the most 

 effective method for its suppression. The notice was so short 

 that compliance with the request was found impossible. Your 

 Secretary took the liberty, after consultation with President 

 Parker, to assure the Massachusetts Society for the Promotion 

 of Agriculture that it might depend upon the hearty co-opera- 

 tion of the Worcester County Horticultural Society in 

 any proper measures that should be suggested for the extinction 

 of that, or any similar, unmitigated nuisance. No information 

 has come to hand, hitherto, of the line of action advised at that 

 meeting ; nor indeed whether it was actually held. That it 

 ought to have been cannot be disputed. It ma}^ well be ques- 

 tioned whether the efforts to exterminate the Gypsy-moth are 

 directed towards the elimination of a greater evil than this 

 which we have so long known; and which, unless greater vigor 

 is shown in dealing with it, bids fair to abide with us in perpet- 

 ual ravage. Our fairest landscapes are disfigured by its over- 

 whelming, rapacious presence ; and park-ways, otherwise attrac- 

 tive, are rendered positively repulsive by its disgusting fecun- 



