176 NEW BRUNSWICK FORESTRY CONVENTION 



according to reports, it is destructive to the foliage of all the trees, and it is 

 about impossible to eradicate. I do not refer to the Gipsy Moth, in regard 

 to which the United States Government has spent nearly a million dollars, 

 but this is still more destructive and difficult to reach and it has arrived in 

 the County of Washington, adjoining the County of Charlotte in this Prov- 

 ince. I am told that already their spies or pioneers have arrived to spy out 

 the fatness of the land. They come through in the box cars that pass 

 through the State of Maine. The destruction they make is said to be very 

 great whole forests denuded, just as if fire had passed through them. And 

 then, by contact with them, it is said, they bring on an illness so poisonous 

 are they, it is said, that hairs dropping down from the bushes against one's 

 flesh will produce serious results. What I wish to ask these gentlemen is, if 

 they are so destructive as is reported, and also if they confine their destruc- 

 tion to the round leaf or deciduous trees, or whether they attach firs ? I 

 would like to ask, for the information of this Convention, whether that 

 enemy is so much to be dreaded, whether it is so destructive and whether it 

 attacks other trees than what we call the hard woods ? 



PROF. GARY Mr. Premier, I am not a first class authority on that 

 subject, but I have a general knowledge of it. The moths so destructive in 

 Massachusetts are destructive to soft wood growth, to a considerable extent 

 as well as to hard wood growth. But it is certainly hoped that a stop will 

 be put to their incursions before real wholesale destructive work is done. 

 The analogy of things of that kind is favorable to hope, and we have many 

 scientists at work on the problem in a most thorough-going, effective way, 

 endeavoring to meet the difficulty. The history of such things in general 

 has been this, that after a pest of this kind has developed to a certain ex- 

 tent, some enemy to the pest develops on its heels and finally catches up 

 and destroys it in turn. So we hope to find somewhere on the face of the 

 earth and our men are exploring for it some enemy or disease of the 

 Brown Tailed Moth, which will attack them and finally clear them out. 

 Our scientific men are working on that line and hope to be successful There 

 certainly is considerable danger of wholesale destruction, but we hope for 

 better things, and that this pest will be headed off before it assumes propor- 

 tions which are really national in their destructiveness. 



MR. HAZEN Would it be in order at the present time, to present a 

 report ? Among the Committees appointed yesterday, on the motion of Mr. 

 Gregory, there was a Committee, none of the members of which were to be 

 lumbermen perhaps I may say that it is composed of laymen, rather than 



