THE GYPSY MOTH 



ITS HISTORY IN AMERICA. 



ITS INTRODUCTION. 



The gypsy moth(Porthetria dispar)& pest of European 

 countries, was introduced into America in 1868 or 1869 

 by Leopold Trouvelot, a French artist, naturalist and astron- 

 omer of note. Prof. C. V. Riley, then State entomologist 

 of Missouri, recorded the occurrence in 1870 in these words : 

 " Only a year ago the larva of a certain owlet moth (Hy- 

 pogymna dispar} which is a great pest in Europe both to 

 fruit trees and forest trees, was accidentally introduced by a 

 Massachusetts entomologist into New England, where it is 

 spreading with great rapidity." * 



Though Professor Riley did not then mention Trouvelot 

 or Medford, the facts were evidently well known to him, as 

 twenty years later he wrote in ''Insect Life" as follows: 

 " This conspicuous insect, although not recorded in any of 

 our check lists of North American Lepidoptera, has un- 

 doubtedly been present in a restricted locality in Massachu- 

 setts for about twenty years. It was imported by Mr. L. 

 Trouvelot in the course of his experiments with silk-worms, 

 recorded in the early volumes of the ' American Naturalist,' 

 and certain of the moths escaping, he announced the fact 

 publicly, and we mentioned it in the second volume of the 

 'American Entomologist,' page 111 (1870), and in our 

 ''Second Report on the Insects of Missouri,' page 10. "f 



In a Bulletin of the Hatch Experiment Station, published 

 in November/ 1889, Prof. C. H. Fernald wrote: "Mr. 

 Samuel Henshaw and Dr. Hagen(of Cambridge have both 

 informed me that the entomologist who introduced this 



* Riley's Second Report on Insects of Missouri, page 10. 

 t Insect Life, Vol. II., No. 7, 8, page 208. 



