ITS KAYAGES IN 1890. 



41 



Mr. G. T. Pierce, who was employed in 1890, writes : — 



When I was working at Dr. Newton's place on Highland Ave- 

 nue, Somerville, on seventeen or eighteen apple trees you coukl 

 not find a leaf that had enough left of it to call it a leaf. Most 

 of them were only a stub of the midrib. In a large bunch of 

 willows at Wellington, which the old commission cut down almost 

 the first thing they did, the trunks were literallj^ covered with egg 

 clusters from the ground up, so that I doubt if you could find 

 many places where you could put your hand on the surface of the 

 tree without covering one or more nests. 



Mr. C. S. Mixter, an ex-employee, testified as fol- 

 lows : — 



In one place in Chelsea the nests were so thick in 1890 that you 

 could not put your finger down without striking a nest. We 

 scraped the nests off. We had several panfuls. 



Despite the great destruction of the moth by the commis- 

 sion during the work of 1890, the ravages of the creature 

 in Medford were still serious. Although the injury wrought 

 was not as widespread as in 1889, the stripping of trees 

 and the consequent loss of fruit crops still continued. On 

 Spring Street, in 1890, the moths appear to have been at 

 their worst. Mr. W. B. Harmon, of No. 55 Spring Street, 

 says : — 



In the summer of 1890 the caterpillars destroyed all our fruit. 

 They attacked and stripped the apple trees first, and then turned 

 their attention to the pear trees, which they also stripped. The 

 young fruit was entirely ruined, and we had nothing that fall. 

 The trees in places were actually black with the caterpillars. 

 They would collect in great bunches, and we would sweep them 

 off with a broom. . . . We could not step out of doors, either 

 upon the grass or the walk, without crushing the caterpillars 

 under foot. Over our front door the house was black with them. 

 We would clean them off every morning, but in an hour it would be 

 black again. People could not come in that way. It is no exag- 

 geration to say that there were pecks of the caterpillars under the 

 doorsteps and on the fence. . . . The next lot to ours was a 

 vacant brush lot. It actually swarmed with caterpillars, and they 

 came from there into our yard by thousands. 



