' THE AVINTER NESTS 49 



they wish to feed, crawling down the twig to reach the near- 

 by foliage. They return to their nests at night and when not 

 feeding, so that in the spring of the 3'ear when the leaves are 

 ■coming out, if one wishes to pick oft^ the nests, one should be 

 •careful to do it at a time when the little caterpillars are pres- 

 ent. ' But there is no excuse for waiting until spring to 

 remove the nests. 



These caterpillars continue to feed and grow until about the 

 ■middle of June. Each then spins around itself a silken 

 •cocoon, the cocoon being attached to some convenient shelter, 

 commonly the leaves of the food tree. Inside of these cocoons 

 the caterpillars change to chrysalids, and three or four weeks 

 later again change to the peculiar whitish moths, with a tuft 

 •of brown hairs at the end of the body of the females, which 

 ■gives them the common name, Brown-tail Moth. These 

 moths lay eggs in clusters of two or three hundred each on 

 the leaves, generally near the ends of branches, and the latter 

 part of summer these eggs hatch into small caterpillars, which 

 feed upon the leaves, forming gradually the protective mass 

 which remains upon the trees through the winter. The cater- 

 pillars remain inside the webbed leaves and thus wait until the 

 iidvent of the following spring. 



The caterpillars of this Brown-tail Moth feed upon a great 

 variety of fruit and shade trees. At times they become fright- 

 fully destructive and their presence in many of the Massachu- 

 •setts towns has been recognized as a grave public danger. 

 Every place where a colony becomes established will serve as 

 ^ centre of infestation for a new area, so that it is of vital im- 

 portance that a lookout be kept, and at the first sign of the 

 insect the outbreak be checked. 



THE WINTER NESTS 



The Brown-tail Moth is a pest much easier to control than 

 the Gypsy Moth on account of its habit of passing the winter 

 in the cocoon-like nests already mentioned. The recognition 

 of these nests by the citizens of the state is now the most im- 

 portant thing in regard to the presence of these insects, and 

 consequently I show in these pages photographic illustrations 

 of a number of different tvpes of them. In general they are 



