42 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



can enter the fruit. This second treatment would hardly be 

 necessary more than once in three or four years, unless the light 

 crop and high prices justified efforts to produce the largest pos- 

 sible quantity of sound fruit. 



GIPSY MOTH 



Porthetria dispar Linn. 

 Plates 9-12 



The discovery in August last of a gipsy moth infestation at 

 Lenox, Mass., renders most timely anything relating to this ex- 

 ceedingly destructive pest. A personal examination of the con- 

 ditions compels us to hold that in all probability the insect was 

 brought to Lenox with some recently set nursery stock. There 

 was nothing in the local situation, so far as we could see, to 

 justify the belief that the pest had been carried by automobiles. 

 A similar infestation might easily occur west of the New York 

 State line. This insect may be found elsewhere in the Berk- 

 shire region, or in fact in almost any place where nursery stock 

 has been planted in recent years, provided it was grown in a 

 locality where there was an opportunity for infestation. We 

 hope that a careful examination of all such localities, wherever 

 they may be, will show practical immunity from this pest. It 

 must be recognized that this appearance of the gipsy moth in a 

 section widely separated from the previously known infested 

 district was to be expected and that similar infestations may 

 develop in the future, even though there be the most careful and 

 rigid examination of all trees and shrubs shipped out of the in- 

 fested territory. There have already been, aside from the case 

 mentioned above, several such instances. A small colony of 

 brown-tail moth caterpillars was found in Westchester county 

 in 1909, brought there with ornamentals grown in the vicinity 

 of Boston, Mass. A similar condition (gipsy moth caterpillars 

 being also present) obtained the following year in New Jersey 

 just across the New York State line. Fortunately, exterminative 

 measures were promptly adopted. These cases illustrate the 

 danger of spreading both gipsy and brown-tail moths with nur- 

 sery stock. It is our opinion that under present conditions we 

 have in nursery stock a most important carrier of these insect 

 pests to sections remote from the infested territory. A careful 

 analysis of the situation would, in our estimation, justify the 

 conclusion that this danger was much greater in the case of 



