348 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



enormous expense involved, compelling the abandonment of 

 the whole exterminative work. 



2. The increased danger of disseminating the moth, due 

 to the constant opening to travel of new paths, parkways, 

 boulevards and trolley lines, leading into and through these 

 woodlands, also makes immediate extermination necessary 

 there. 



3. If extermination in these woodlands is to succeed, it 

 must be begun at once, and on a large scale. The work must 

 be of the most thorough nature, and it must be followed up 

 throughout every month of the year. 



4. Much of this woodland has been taken for metropolitan 

 or municipal parks ; other large portions are highly valued 

 for prospective building purposes. While cutting and burn- 

 ing all the trees on these forested lands might be in the end 

 the most economical course, such measures need hardly be 

 considered in the case of public parks ; there less drastic 

 methods are recommended. If the trees are to be generally 

 preserved there, and it seems that they must be, the extermi- 

 nation of the moth from these lands will be extremely ex- 

 pensive. With larger appropriations in the past, advantage 

 could have been taken of the favorable conditions then exist- 

 ing. The moth could have been readily and rapidly exter- 

 minated from the colonies, then comparatively very small, in 

 the central woodlands, and thus, of course, prevented from 

 spreading over the large tracts it now occupies. A great 

 deal of money would thus have been saved in the end. 



5. The reduction of past appropriations and the delay in 

 making them has necessitated a repetition of merely partial 

 work year after year in many colonies, deferring their exter- 

 mination and increasing its ultimate cost three to ten times. 

 The force in not a few instances has been compelled to skip 

 from one part of the territory to another, much as if a fire 

 department, in attempting to control a fierce conflagration 

 with an insuflicient number of men, should run about from 

 one outbreak to another, completely subduing none. Under 

 this policy the moth has increased and spread in every place 

 which has been for the time necessarily neglected. 



6. Experience demonstrates that the moth colonies can- 

 not be exterminated in detail. On the contrary, if extermi- 

 nation is to succeed, every eftbrt must be made each 3'ear to 



