The general policy of the station has been to furnish 

 information on such subjects as were uppermost in the minds 

 of the public, and to take up the investigations of such 

 questions as were of practical importance. The quarterly 

 bulletins are therefore an index of the general correspondence 

 carried on through the year in this State. In conformity to 

 this policy, experiment has been made of the different 

 methods of heating green-houses, soil tests have been under- 

 taken, and information disseminated on such insects as were 

 at the time most injurious in their depredations. That this 

 has met the requirements of the State would seem to be 

 indicated b}^ the steady and increasing demand for our bul- 

 letins. The edition of sixty-five hundred in January, 1889, 

 has been increased with successive issues, till that of January, 

 1890, numbered ten thousand. Four regular bulletins have 

 been sent out over the State ; and a special one from the ento- 

 mological division, of twenty-three thousand copies, local in 

 its character, to every tax-payer in the towns of Medford, 

 Everett, Stoneham, Winchester, Maiden and Somerville. 

 A dangerous insect pest, of foreign origin, more feared 

 abroad than the potato beetle here, suddenly made its 

 appearance in West Medford, and threatened spreading over 

 the entire State. To give information respecting the appear- 

 ance and habits of this moth, the danger of permitting it to 

 get a foothold, and the best remedies to be used in combat- 

 ing it, a bulletin was sent to each tax payer in the infested 

 district and the towns immediately adjoining.* In view of 

 the fact that this moth is wonderfully prolific, the female 

 laying from four hundred to five hundred eggs ; that its 

 appetite is almost omniverous, the list of its food plants 

 ranging from cabbage, strawberry and corn up to the cherry, 

 quince, apple, elm, maple and oak; and that it has now 

 "multiplied to such an extent as to cause the entire de- 

 struction of the fruit crop, and also to defoliate the shade 

 trees in the infested region," — it would seem judicious for 



* It is with pleasure that we record bere our indebtedness to the Secretary of 

 tlie Board of Agriculture. But for his generous assistance, we should have been 

 unable to meet the additional expense involved in the publishing of so large an 

 edition of an extra bulletin. 



