-V MOTH IN CONNECTICUT. 25 



Connecticut board of agriculture kindly appropriated $2,000, to be 

 used if needed, and Governor Roberts and his associates assured us 

 that if after using this money at our disposal -till more was ueeded 

 to hold the pest in check it would be forthcoming. We called upon 

 the board of agriculture for $800, and the remaining $900 has come 

 from our own insect-pesi appropriation. An attempt will he made 

 to have the State legislature, which soon convene-, set aside a few 

 thousand dollar- to be used if needed in work against the gipsy and 

 brown-tail moth-. The brown-tail moth has not yet been found in 

 Connecticut, though it must he very near it- border- in Massachu- 

 setts. We shall endeavor to exterminate tin- gipsy-moth colony at 

 Stonington. and this can be done if it ha- not spread beyond the area 

 where Ave have found it. The village of Stonington i> on a narrow 

 point of land extending into the ocean. The infested territory ex- 

 tends from the village northward and slightly eastward; it i> Hanked 

 on both sides by water — on the east by the Wequetequock River and 

 on the we-t by an arm of the sea extending northward from Ston- 

 ington Harbor. A line from the northernmost extremity of this -alt 

 water extending easterly to Wequetequock River cut- the mainland 

 some distance north of where any caterpillars or v^g masses have 

 been found, although considerable scouting has been done in this 

 section and many of the trees were banded in caterpillar time. 



Two natural enemies of the gipsy moth have been ob>erved in 

 Connecticut. The "caterpillar hunter" or "searcher" (Calosoma 

 scrutator Fab.) was quite common under the band-, and one of these 

 in captivity devoured gipsy moth caterpillar- with avidity. Out 

 of the ten thousand or more caterpillar- gathered and destroyed four 

 diseased ones were observed. The>e shriveled and finally died, as 

 if attacked by >ome bacterial di-ea-e. While in Massachusetts the 

 Ja-t week in June I observed the same or a similar disease which 

 killed many caterpillar-, though of course only a small proportion. 

 Dr. Cj. E. Stone, botanist of the Massachusetts experiment station 

 at Amherst, was investigating the matter, and I sent him two of the 

 diseased caterpillar- from Stonington. At that time he wa- not 

 ready to report on the nature of the di-ea-e. but stated that a number 

 of different organisms had been isolated from the diseased caterpillar-. 



Just how the pest reached Stonington may perhaps never be 

 known, but there is much speculation regarding it. Eggs or pupae 

 may have been brought on packing boxes to the velvet mill or upon 

 freight car- left upon the -pur track. Certainly the worst infesta- 

 tion wa- near the velvet mill and the railroad, and 1 feel that it must 

 have reached Stonington on steam car- via the New York, New 

 Haven and Hartford Railroad. Some think that it may have been 

 a direct importation from Europe, a- Germans live in the locality. 

 work in the mill, and occasionally travel back and forth. 



