24 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



ranged from Ys to ^/i oi a. mile in width. The outbreak occurred 

 on Graham mountain, some 13 miles southeast of Arkville on the 

 west side of a ridge running in a southwesterly direction and at an 

 altitude of approximately 3700 feet. The caterpillars were so 

 numerous that practically all the younger beech trees and the lower 

 branches of the larger trees were completely defoliated, and in a 

 few instances trees 35 to 40 feet high were entirely stripped of 

 leaves, the pest devouring everything except the midrib and larger 

 lateral veins. 



Early history. This leaf feeder is best known on account of 

 the serious injuries inflicted by the caterpillars on the shade trees 

 of New York, Philadelphia and other cities prior to about 1880. 

 Mr A. R. Grote, writing of this species in 1881, states that this 

 pest used to be so common in Brooklyn when he attended school 

 there in 1857 and subsequently, "that the horse-chestnuts, elms and 

 maples, the latter especially, became completely defoliated and the 

 brown measuring worms used to hang down and cover the side- 

 walks ultimately to the great discomfort of passers by." The 

 situation in Brooklyn was 90 serious in 1861, according to Lintner, 

 that the Common Council contemplated passing an ordinance com- 

 pelling the removal of all linden trees from the public streets. 

 Other writers in 1866 and later allude to the great injuries inflicted 

 by these caterpillars upon shade trees, particularly those of Phila- 

 delphia. A paragraph in Popular Science Monthly for 1881 

 [4:381] states that " for several years the measuring worm preyed 

 on the leaves of the trees in Philadelphia to such an extent that 

 early in the summer' scarcely any foliage would be left remaining." 

 This condition continued till the introduction of the English spar- 

 row, which latter, though a serious pest on many accounts, was 

 the means of ridding our cities of this voracious measuring worm. 

 The benefit resulting from the activity of the bird, appears to have 

 been short-lived, as we now have in the white marked tussock 

 moth, Heterocampa leucostigma Abb. & Sm., a pest 

 that appears to be fully as destructive as the species under discus- 

 sion, though in some respects more easily controlled. 



This measuring worm is ruDw coming into prominence as a 

 destructive enemy of forest trees. Prof. J. H. Comstock, in his 

 report for 1880, states that specimens oi this Geometrid were 

 received from Mr Adam Davenport of Morgantown, Fannin co., 

 Ga. with the statement that the insects had first been observed in 

 the county two years before, and that they had spread rapidly and 



