The Gypsy Moth. 



Its History in America. 



Its Introduction. 



The gypsy moih(Porthetria dispar)si pest of European 

 countries, was introduced into America in 1868 or 1869 

 by Leopold Trouvelot, a French artist, naturalist and astron- 

 omer of note. Prof. C. Y. Kiley, then State entomologist 

 of Missouri, recorded the occurrence in 1870 in these words : 



Only a year ago the larva of a certain owlet moth 

 pogymna dispar) which is a great pest in Europe both to 

 fruit trees and forest trees, was accidentally introduced by a 

 Massachusetts entomologist into New England, where it is 

 spreading with great rapidity." * 



Though Professor Riley did not then mention Trouvelot 

 or Medford, the facts were evidently well known to him, as 

 twenty years later he wrote in "Insect Life" as follows: 

 "This conspicuous insect, although not recorded in any of 

 our check lists of North American Lepidoptera, has un- 

 doubtedly been present in a restricted locality in Massachu- 

 setts for about twenty years. It was imported by Mr. L. 

 Trouvelot in the course of his experiments with silk-worms, 

 recorded in the early volumes of the ' American Naturalist,' 

 and certain of the moths escaping, he announced the fact 

 publicly, and we mentioned it in the second volume of the 

 * American Entomologist,' page 111 (1870), and in our 

 ' Second Report on the Insects of Missouri,' page 10." f 



In a Bulletin of the Hatch Experiment Station, published 

 in November, 1889, Prof. C. H. Fernald wrote: "Mr. 

 Samuel Henshaw and Dr. Hagen of Cambridge have both 

 informed me that the entomologist who introduced this 



* Riley's Second Report on Insects of Missouri, page 10. 

 t Insect Life, Vol. II., No. 7, 8, page 208. 



