158 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I904. 



"A reliable observer, Mr. A. M. Cobb, Maiden, Mass., reports 

 that when the Bangor boat of the Eastern Steamship Line was 

 passing some miles off Marblehead, early in July, 1904, a large 

 swarm of the brown-tail moths came aboard and completely 

 covered parts of the vessel." * Dr. James Fletcher, entomolo- 

 gist, Central Experiment Farms, Ottawa, Can., reports that a 

 single specimen of the brown-tail moth was taken at St. John, 

 N. B., in the summer of 1902. Such occurrences suggest the 

 advisability of watching each fall the ports along this line for 

 winter nests. 



About the middle of July, 1904, the morning after a strong 

 southwesterly wind, the telegraph poles and the sides of some of 

 the buildings near the Kittery Navy Yards were reported to be 

 white with the white-winged brown-tail moths. The town was 

 alarmed and great numbers of the moths were washed down 

 with hose and destroyed, but that many escaped and deposited 

 eggs, the neighboring trees (especially the pears and wild 

 cherries) bear abundant evidence. 



Thus strong winds, lighted trains and boats, and vehicles of 

 all sorts are seen to be among the factors which hasten the 

 natural spread of this dreaded pest. 



REMEDIAL MEASURES, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 



Destruction of certain breeding places. 



The vicinity of Kittery, the entering point for the pest in 

 Maine, is overgrown with wild cherry tangles, caterpillar- 

 haunted f and distorted with black -knot fungus. Old and 

 worthless trees, either fruitless or bearing scabby pears and 

 apples, straggle neglected along the lanes and hang half dead 

 branches over every wall. Inasmuch as such trees are a menace 

 to the orchard interests of York county and to the State, it is 

 desirable that they be cut down and burned. Some large and 

 carefully tended orchards (one near Elliott yielded 1,300 barrels 

 in 1902) which are within ten miles of the infested district 

 should be protected against needless risks. 



*Mass. Crop Report, Vol. 17, No. 3, p. 3b. 



t Among the mo9t destructive being the tent caterpillar, two species of tussock 

 moths, the fall web worm and the brown-tail moth. 



