8 



THE GYPSY MOTH. 



That their efforts were finally without avail is true, but it 

 might have been otherwise had the moths not remained 

 unmolested in the woodland near by, from which, whenever 

 food became insufficient, they sallied out and overwhelmed 

 the near gardens and orchards. 



Mr. William Taylor, No. 19 Myrtle Street, speaking of 

 the years from 1879 to 1889, said : — 



In the fall of 1879 I moved to 27 Myrtle Street, where Mr. 

 Trouvelot, who brought the gypsy moth to this coimtry, formerl}^ 

 lived. In the following spring I found the shed in the rear of his 

 house swarming with caterpillars. I knew that Mr. Trouvelot 

 had been experimenting with silk-worms, but I did not know that 

 the swarms of caterpillars in the shed came from the gypsy moth. 

 The caterpillars were sucli a nuisance in and around the shed that 

 I got permission to sell it, and it was taken to Mr. Harmon's on 

 Spring Street. This will explain how the moth was carried into 

 that section, and wliy the woods there became so badly infested. 

 I fought the caterpillars of the gypsy moth for ten years before 

 the State did anything. In their season I used to gather them 

 literally by the quart before going to work in the morniug. 



Mr. and Mrs. William Belcher, well-known residents cf 

 Glenwood, still residing at No. 29 Myrtle Street, have had 

 the best of opportunities to observe the increase of the in- 

 sect in that vicinit3^ Mrs. Belcher writes as follows : — 



Mr. Trouvelot, who is said to have introduced the gypsy moth 

 into this country, was a next-door neighbor of ours. The cater- 

 pillars troubled us for six or eight years before they attained to 

 their greatest destructiveness. This was in 1889. They were all 

 over the outside of the house, as well as the trees. All the foli- 

 age was eaten off our trees, the apples being attacked first and the 

 pears next. 



Mrs. J. W. Flinn of Maiden, who lived in Glenwood near 

 Mr. Trouvelot's house during a part of this decade, says : — 



We moved to Myrtle Street, Medford, in 1882, and that year the 

 gypsy-moth caterpillars were very troublesome in our yard and in 

 those of our immediate neighbors. At that time they were con- 

 fined to our part of Myrtle Street, but they soon spread in all 

 directions. The caterpillars were over everything in our yard and 



