Photo from U. S. Department of Agriculture 

 BROWN-TAIIv MOTHS ON A 'iRt^ 



That sort of importation of insect pests 

 is fortunately rare, and this is almost the 

 only case of the kind on record. 



The brown-tail moth (see page 52), 

 on the contrary, came to America in the 

 normal course of commerce. Its winter 

 nests were brought here attached to some 

 rose-bushes which were imported by a 

 Massachusetts florist from Holland, and, 

 unrecognized, the caterpillars issued the 

 following spring and the species soon be- 

 came established in America. 



The gipsy-moth was brought over in 

 1868 and remained unrecognized until 

 1889. The brown-tail was brought here 

 in 1891 and was first recognized in 1894. 



From 1892 until 1900, both species be- 

 ing confined to the extreme eastern por- 

 tion of the State of Massachusetts, a fight 

 for extermmation was waged against 

 them by the authorities of that State. 

 Unfortunately, certain influences at work 

 caused the stopping of the appropriations 

 in 1900, and from that time until 1905 

 both insects spread uninterruptedly save 

 for private work on the part of indi- 

 vidual property-holders. In 1905 Massa- 

 chusetts began again to appropriate large 

 sums for the purpose of trying once 

 more to exterminate the pests, and later, 

 as the spread continued. New Hampshire, 

 Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut began 

 to spend money in the same direction. 

 Then the United States government 

 stepped in, and in an effort not to exter- 

 minate the insects, but to prevent their 

 further spread over the face of the coun- 

 try, large sums have been spent annually 

 in the attempt at least to restrict them. 



IMPORTING MOTH PARASITES 



In 1905 was begun for the first time 

 the attempt to import from Europe and 

 from Japan the parasites and other nat- 

 ural insect enemies of the gipsy-moth, 

 and in the course of this attempt exten- 

 sive travels have been made by agents of 

 the Department of Agriculture, the serv- 

 ices of foreign naturalists have been 

 called in, and enormous numbers of para- 

 sites have been brought from all over 

 central and southern Europe and from 

 Japan and have been colonized in the in- 

 fested region. 



The introduction of the pests and their 

 spread furnishes the first geographic fea- 

 ture. The search for their parasites the 

 second, and the third has been the quar- 

 antine by the newly constituted Federal 

 Horticultural Board of the United States 



40 



