1054 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



food plants. In such cases they have propagated rapidly 

 because the balance of Nature was no longer maintained. 

 They escaped from the enemies which held them in check- 

 in their own country, with the result in many cases that 

 they increased so amazingly and wrought such tremendous 

 damage that even the easy-going "pacifist" American 

 public has been forced to fight them. In most cases, how- 

 ever, the fight against imported plant pests has been 

 begun too late. We have waited until they became so 

 thoroughly established over a wide area that it has been 

 too expensive to apply eradication measures that would 

 have been effective in the beginning. 



Comparatively recent experience with imported pests 

 has made it apparent that the bug is blightier than the 

 sword. The uncontrolled ravages of the late blight and 

 rot of potatoes in 1916 was responsible for the shortage 

 in the potato crop which sent prices soaring and brought 

 the humble spud into prominence hitherto unknown. 

 Powdery scale and scurf are two other potato diseases 

 which have been brought in from abroad. More recently, 

 the potato wart disease, established in Pennsylvania from 

 European importations, has given cause for alarm. The 

 Hessian fly, introduced from Europe in Revolutionary 

 times, causes an average annual loss to the wheat crop 

 of fifty million dollars, and in some years the loss from 

 this one insect has exceeded 100 million dollars. The 

 loss of fruit due to the codling moth, together with the 

 money spent in controlling this insect, costs the United 

 States about 16 million dollars a year. Another imported 

 fruit insect, the San Jose scale, entails a loss of at least 

 10 million dollars annually. 



The tale of the gypsy moth, in ribald rhyme, illustrates 



THE RAVAGES OF CHESTNUT BLIGHT 



A forest of American chestnut trees destroyed by the chestnut bark disease, a pest introduced from 

 China. This disease passes directly from one chestnut tree to another and no remedy has been 

 found for it. The disease was first found in the vicinity of New York City, in 1904, since which 

 time it has spread to Massachusetts, and, southern New Hampshire, western New York, Ohio, West 

 Virginia and North Carolina. 



WHERE, OH WHERE IS MY LITTLE TREE GONE? 



what happens when an insect reaches the United States 

 from another country. To paraphrase: 



There was a man who freed two moths, 

 And those two moths were mothers, 



That year there were a million more, 

 The next a million others. 



They had tremendous appetites, 



And wrought great devastation, 

 Until the State with wrath arose, 



And fought like Carrie Nation. 



In this case an investigator 

 was experimenting in Massachu- 

 setts with two gypsy moths 

 imported in connection with an 

 experiment in silk culture. Un- 

 fortunately the door of the cage 

 was accidentally opened and the 

 insects escaped. The investiga- 

 tor immediately notified the au- 

 thorities of the danger but no 

 attention was paid to the warn- 

 ing. A few years later the trees 

 on a small area were defoliated 

 but still no concern was mani- 

 fested. However, the next year 

 the insects became so numerous 

 that a large territory was in- 

 vaded by them and the authori- 

 ties at last woke up. A fight 

 was begun which has lasted for 

 years and today it has cost more 

 than 15 million dollars in cash 

 for applying control measures, 

 beside many times this amount of 

 property damage. 



"What next?" is constantly 

 asked by the nurserymen, fruit 



