DELAY IN LEGISLATION. 



85 



When it became evident that there would be considerable 

 delay in legislation, the committee authorized the director to 

 employ as a nucleus of an organization such experienced men 

 as were willing to wait for their pay until such time as the 

 Legislature should make an appropriation. The office force 

 was employed ; the records were closed up ; examinations of 

 applicants for positions on the force were begun ; arrange- 

 ments were made for the purchase of supplies ; and other 

 preliminaries, providing for the early employment of a full 

 force of men, were arranged. When the appropriation 

 became available, it was too late in the season to accom- 

 plish much by the destruction of eggs, for most of them had 

 hatched. As the men were put at work, those who were 

 inexperienced were given a week or more of training in 

 clearing up infested woodlands and cutting and burning- 

 brush . They were then organized into burlapping gangs 

 and employed in placing burlap bands around the trees in 

 infested localities. 



It was found necessary to increase the force as rapidly as 

 the careful selection and examination of men allowed, for the 

 caterpillars of the moth were appearing numerously wherever 

 the egg-clusters had not been destroyed. As the season 

 advanced the great increase in the numbers of the moth was 

 noticeable. More men than were ever before employed in 

 the work were engaged to meet the emergency. On July 

 20 three hundred and fifty men were at work, and even with 

 this force it was not possible to prevent occasional injury to 

 foliage in certain places. A swarm of caterpillars appeared 

 in one locality in Dorchester, within a few rods of the point 

 where the inspection of the winter previous had ceased on 

 account of snow. Many of the trees in an oak grove were 

 defoliated before the presence of the caterpillars was dis- 

 covered. Immediate steps were taken to destroy them and 

 in a short time some eighteen bushels of caterpillars were 

 killed in this locality. 



Various points in the woods of Lexington and Woburn 

 were found to be swarming with the caterpillars of the gypsy 

 moth. Here they defoliated several acres of woodland. 

 Later in the season similar colonies were discovered in the 

 woods of Medford, one being situated in the southern por- 



