VALUE OF BIRDS TO MAN. 39 
Board of Agriculture was given charge of the work in 1891, 
and over one million dollars were expended within the next 
ten years in the attempt to exterminate the insect. As at 
the expiration of that time all the larger moth colonies had 
been destroyed, the Legislature, deeming further expendi- 
ture unwise, gave up the work, despite the protest of the 
Board of Agriculture, and its prediction that a speedy rise 
of the moth would follow the cessation of concerted effort 
against it. This prediction has been abundantly fulfilled, 
and the policy of the Board has been fully justified. 
Dr. Marlatt, who in 1904 visited the region infested by the 
moth, reported to the Bureau of Entomology at Washington 
that the people of the infested district were then fighting the 
insect at a greater annual cost than that formerly assumed 
by the State. Since the State gave up the work, a single 
citizen, Gen. Samuel C. Lawrence of Medford, has expended 
over seventy-five thousand dollars to protect the trees and 
plants on his estate. 
Finally, in 1905 the Legislature was obliged to renew the 
fight, and appropriate the sum of three hundred thousand 
dollars for work against both this insect and another im- 
ported pest, —the brown-tail moth (Huproctis chrysorrhea) , 
which had been introduced into Somerville some time in the 
latter part of the nineteenth century. 
The State has also been obliged to call on municipalities 
and individuals to assist in the work of suppressing these 
moths, at an annual expense to those concerned which ex- 
ceeds all previous yearly expenditures for this purpose. 
These insects have gained a much larger territory than 
ever before, and thousands of acres of woodland have been 
attacked by them during the present year (1905), and many 
pine and other trees have been killed. 
The gipsy moth has been found in Rhode Island, Connect- 
icut, and New Hampshire, and the brown-tail moth is also 
~ spreading into other States. 
The prospect now seems to be that our protective expenses 
against these two insects, as well as the injury done by them, 
will increase constantly ; and that other States also will be 
put to similar expense, with no prospect of permanent relief 
