STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 49 



experiment to be almost indestructible witli common, natural 

 means, where they have tested these eggs frozen and thawed out 

 and frozen again up to six times in succession and then had the 

 eggs hatch out, there is not much show for scattered eggs being 

 killed by remaining under foot along the road, or where the 

 horses travel, or anything of that nature. Now if you, or any 

 other one, should go and attempt to remove an egg cluster, you 

 might drop a half a dozen eggs easily. I would rather have a 

 wdiole egg cluster of five hundred eggs than one scattered egg 

 hatch. Why? If we had five hundred big caterpillars to look 

 for, they would show their work; we would discover it, the 

 infestation of the one nest possibly, while I would defy almost 

 anybody to discover the one or two or half a dozen that had been 

 left scattered. 



Now in regard to the work of last summer, I will give you 

 just one instance of the thoroughness of the work done. As 

 most of you know, we have had men in the field since this law 

 was passed last winter — the work on the gypsy confined wholly 

 to the department — the brown-tail work, any one can cut a 

 brown-tail nest and destroy it, and that is for you to do. But 

 the gypsy must be handled by men trained for the work. And 

 there is no comparison between the two. \\'hy I have been 

 asked many times, " Well, what is the difiFerence between the 

 gypsy and the brown-tail?" Now there is just as much differ- 

 ence as there is between the best citizen in this hall and the worst 

 criminal down to Thomaston. That is the difference. Now 

 these were discovered none too soon. We went to work none 

 too soon. \\^e have had now almost a year's experience wdth 

 the gypsy here in Maine. They have been here five years or 

 more, but we didn't know it. These men were trained in ]\Iassa- 

 chusetts and then went into our work, ^^"e had the national 

 government men first come and scout sections of the territory. 

 One infestation was on a road which was being passed over 

 morning and night by one of our men who was attending the 

 burlaps at another place. He discovered by accident some 

 caterpillars crawling across the road as he went by on his wheel. 

 On investigation we found a very bad infestation that must 

 have been there at least five j^ears, estimated to number over a 

 million full grown caterpillars, almost full grown when discov- 

 ered ; many of them were full grown. We at once put the 



