114 Bulletin 76 



heretofore. Nor has Vermont suffered alone. In some parts of Maine, 

 New Hampshire and Eastern Canada the devastation has been great, and 

 Lowe' states of New York that he is "unable to find any records which 

 indicate that it has ever before occurred in such great numbers over 

 so wide an area within our borders." The pest appears to have been ac- 

 tive over the entire state, but it was much more abundant in the southern 

 and eastern counties than elsewhere, that is, in those portions of New 

 York which are nearest Vermont. 



Probably no species of insect has ever attracted greater notice in Ver- 

 mont or caused more alarm or actually done as much mischief as this. It 

 has been found in nearly all of our towns, though it has not done much 

 harm in some. So far as I can learn it has not been as destructive in the 

 northern part of the state as in the southern, while the middle counties 

 seem on the whole to have suffered most. 



In many places the caterpillars have not spread over the whole town, 

 but, starting at a given point, they have moved on in a narrow band a few 

 rods wide, all of the leaves of trees within this belt being destroyed, while 

 the trees on either side were scarcely touched. Sometimes these belts were 

 so narrow that only a portion of the trees of a single grove were injured. I 

 do not intend to say that this is the usual habit of the caterpillar, but only 

 that it is not infrequently the case. 



On account of the injuries inflicted by the forest caterpillar in 1896 and 

 1897 a portion of Bulletin 60 (October 1897) was devoted to a consideration 

 of its habits ; but the prevalence of the insect since then and the numerous 

 enquiries that have come to the station appear to warrant a more complete 

 account both of the insect and of such methods as have been devised for 

 its destruction. 



At the outset I wish to call attention to the fact that not all the damage 

 which our maples have suffered is caused by the forest caterpillar. In some 

 groves great harm has been done by the large maple borer, Plaginolus sped- 

 osus, Say., and in other places, and these have been numerous, the fall 

 canker worm, Anisopteryx pomelaria, Harr., has done not a little of the leaf 

 stripping which has been attributed to the forest caterpillar. The fall 

 canker worm was very abundant in different parts of the state during the 

 fall of 1899. Nevertheless, no other insect has at all equalled the forest 

 caterpillar in destructiveness. 



Perhaps no other insect is found in such immense masses as this. Quo- 

 tation is made in Bulletin 60 from one of the publications of the United 

 States department of agriculture which gives an account of how the immense 

 hordes of caterpillars stopped the trains on the Carolina Central Railroad. 

 Great armies of the worms as they crossed the railroad tracks were crushed 



I pr. Y. (State) Sta. Bui, 159, p. 37 (1895'. 



