368 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



our last word, we pray you, for the good of the State in the future, 

 for the good of coming generations, let the work go on, and history 

 will applaud the broadness of your foresight, the wisdom of your 

 verdict. 



These were the final points in the committee's work before 

 the Legislature of 1900. That report and this report will 

 be history. The future will record the verdict. 



Only one other point, — there has been expended more 

 than a million dollars in the extermination of this pest. It 

 was necessarily l)egun in the nature of experimental work, 

 and wrought out until the system is acknowledged superior 

 to any known. The national government solicited the privi- 

 lege of exhibiting models of the spraying apparatus at the 

 recent Paris Exposition, where they received the gold medal 

 for excellence. This award attests their value. True, a 

 million dollars seems a great sum to those who know nothing 

 of the magnitude of the work performed in these nine years ; 

 and yet, if it had accomplished nothing in the extermination 

 of the gypsy moth, the result in more effective and cheaper 

 insecticides, as, for instance, arsenate of lead, and the im- 

 proved machinery and appliances discovered and invented 

 under the administration of this committee, and now in use 

 all over the State for the destruction of the elm-leaf beetle 

 and other tree pests, with no patents to increase their cost, 

 are and will be of more economic value to the State than all 

 the money expended. 



The Board of Agriculture has done its work. The State 

 of Massachusetts, who, through its Legislature, stopped the 

 work when *' not a large colony " could be found and when 

 extermination was in sight, has taken upon itself the respon- 

 sibility, and there let it nest. This Board has no apologies 

 to make ; it has given its best efforts and done its best work 

 every day and every hour from the beginning to the end. 

 It has given this work into the hands of a carefully selected 

 committee. Their reward and its reward are the benefit to 

 the people. One day in each fourteen has been set apart by 

 this committee for careful investigation and consideration of 

 means, methods and results. It looked forward confidently 

 to the laurels that would crown its successful issue, — the 



