BANDING TREES. 



127 



ing the trees by encircling the trunks with some appliance 

 or substance which the larvae cannot cross.* The protection 

 of large trees by banding is most important as their size 

 favors the distribution of the moth, rendering it both diffi- 

 cult and expensive to care for them. 



Such trees are often situated near buildings, lumber piles, 

 ledges, accumulations of loose rock or other objects which 

 offer many hiding places to the caterpillars and other forms 

 of the gypsy moth. Occasionally sheds or hencoops are 

 built about the trunks of trees. When such places of shelter 

 as are not readily accessible to the workmen are thus offered 

 to the moth, the caterpillars must be prevented from ascend- 

 ing the trees, and either destroyed by starvation or driven 

 to other quarters. Where there is no other vegetation near, 

 this may be accomplished by banding the trees in the early 

 spring. If there is no other food in the vicinity, the young 

 caterpillars prevented from ascending the trees will starve. 

 If there are other trees within crawling distance which are 

 so located and environed as to have no shelter about them 

 inaccessible to man, the migration of the caterpillars thither 

 will facilitate their destruction by the workmen. In wood- 

 lands, if the eggs upon the trees are destroyed and the trees 

 well banded previous to the hatching of eggs, which may have 

 been overlooked on the ground, and all vegetation on the 

 ground is killed by means of the cyclone burner soon after 

 the caterpillars appear, extermination will result. The 

 method of burning caterpillars in infested brush is shown 

 in Plate XX. 



Bands are most useful for these purposes when put on just 

 before the young caterpillars appear. They will then be 

 fresh and sticky when the young larvse are weak and unable 

 to crawl far if deprived of the sustaining and strengthening 

 nourishment which they eagerly seek. Before the hatching 

 of the eggs in 1891 and 1892 many of the large street trees 

 in Maiden and Medford and some in Somerville were banded 

 with strips of tarred paper. This work was first undertaken 

 in Medford. It was proposed by the selectmen of that town 

 as a means of protecting the trees from the gypsy moth and 



* In 1891 bands of loose cotton batting were experimented with for this purpose, 

 but they did not prevent the larger caterpillars from ascending the trees. 



