THE TENT CATERPILLAR 



BY CLARENCE M. WEED 



MONG the many insect pests of the 

 Granite State none is more in evidence 

 during spring and early summer than the 

 Tent Caterpillar,* which for more than a 

 century has ravaged the orchards of New 

 England. In 1790 Samuel Dean wrote 

 from Portland, Mass.: "The principal 

 inconvenience the farmer meets with from 

 caterpillars is the damage they do to his 

 orchard. A hairy kind of caterpillars 

 build their nests on apple trees in May, 

 and are gone entirely in June. But they 

 feed so industriously on the leaves as to destroy a great part of 

 them if they be not timely prevented. As they are far less 

 mischievous than the canker-worm, so they are more easily 

 subdued."! 



Fifty years later Dr. T. W. Harris, of Cambridge, Mass., 

 wrote of "the caterpillars that swarm in the unpruned nurser- 

 ies and neglected orchards of the slovenly and improvident 

 husbandman, and hang their many coated webs upon the wild 

 cherry trees that are suffered to spring up unchecked by the 

 wayside, and encroach upon the borders of pastures and fields." 

 During recent years these insects have also been very abun- 

 dant, and have often defoliated orchards, either alone or with 

 the assistance of the canker worm. 



Apparently, many people do not realize the seriousness of 



*Clisiocamfa americana. 



t New England Farmer or Georgical Dictionary, 1790, p. 41. 



