EDITORIAL COMMENT. 
Pseudoscience. — The leading article of a recent issue of Zhe For- 
ester, entitled * On the Possible Effects of the Gypsy Moth on Amer- 
ican Forests,” is noteworthy as containing a number of far-fetched 
conjectures that are dangerously near charlatanry. The following 
quotation will more than substantiate our statement: “It is not 
unlikely that some of the curious alterations in the distribution of 
forest trees which geologists have recognized may have been due to 
the development in former ages of the Gypsy Moth or other like 
destructive species of insect. Thus in the early Miocene Tertiary 
Europe was tenanted by a host of arboreal species closely akin to 
those that now form our admirable American broad-leaved forests. 
The Magnolias, the Gums and the Tulip trees, etc., were then as 
well developed in Europe as they are in this country. Suddenly all 
these species disappeared from the old world. There is no reason 
to believe that the change was due to an alteration in climate. 
There are many evidences indeed that such was not the case. It is 
a very reasonable conjecture that that alteration was brought about 
by the invasion of an insect enemy which may have been the ancestor 
of the Gypsy Moth." 
Against this * very reasonable conjecture " the words of Dr. Asa 
Gray may be recalled: “Probably the European Miocene forest 
was about as rich and various as is ours of the present day, and very 
like it. The Glacial period came and passed, and these types have 
not survived there, nor returned." 
The statement also “that the naturalist who attained the unhappy 
success" of introducing the gypsy moth into America did so for the 
purpose of interbreeding the introduced insects “ with various native 
species of moths, with the expectation of producing a hybrid which 
would feed on the leaves of our numerous American species of oak 
and produce a valuable kind of silk," shows an absolute lack of the 
first essentials of successful hybridization ; moreover, it does injus- 
tice to a man of pure science whose imagination never rioted with 
vagaries. 
* News"' in the American Naturalist. — Owing to the length 
of time which must necessarily elapse between the preparation of 
53. 
