84 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



inches of soil proved to offer very little, if any, resistance, and 

 within a few hours the borers had worked their way to the sur- 

 face and were crawling towards new food plants. About the 

 middle of the summer a field of barnyard grass was lying flat, 

 every plant so badly infested and weakened that it could not 

 stand. 



It is very interesting to note that the area infested by the 

 corn borer closely compares with that of the gypsy moth in 

 1900, but this comparison will be lost sight of soon unless some 

 decisive measures are immediately taken to control it. Last 

 spring the area infested with the European corn borer covered 

 100 square miles, to-day it is over 340 square miles, having been 

 found now in Topsfield, Beverly, Danvers, North Reading, 

 Reading, Lynnfield, Peabody, Salem, Marblehead, Swampscott, 

 Lynn, Saugus, Wakefield, Woburn, Stoneham, Melrose, Win- 

 chester, Medford, Maiden, Everett, Revere, Winthrop, Nahant, 

 Lexington, Arlington, Somerville, Cambridge, Belmont, Wal- 

 tham, Watertown, Newton, Brookline and Boston. 



Co-operating with the United States government we have 

 this fall placed men in 22 towns, and made a house-to-house 

 canvass, requesting and compelling owners of gardens to clean 

 them up. The way in which the people co-operated in this 

 w^ork has been very gratifying, but it is very important that 

 the weeds around the gardens and the weeds in every vacant 

 lot and roadside be cleaned. 



This would be an enormous undertaking, — picture removing 

 all the weeds in an area of 340 square miles. Even the ragweed 

 and pigweed alone would seem like an almost impossible job, 

 yet it appears to be only a question of whether we will stamp 

 this pest out now, confine it while it is in a relatively small 

 area, or allow it to spread over a large section, making the 

 problem more difficult and causing thousands of dollars worth 

 of damage before considering the task. 



