9 
iu countless numbers by the inhabitants, who swept them up into piles, 
poured kerosene over them, and set them on fire. Thousands upon 
thousands were crushed under the feet of pedestrians, and a pungent 
and filthy stench arose from their decaying bodies. The Dam 
were so gTeat that in the still summer nights the sound of their feed: 
ing could plainly be heard, while the pattering of their excrementaJ 
pellets on the ground sounded like a shower of rain. Valuable fruit 
and shade trees were killed in large numbers by their work and the 
value of real estate was very considerably reduced. So great was the 
nuisance that it was impossible, for example, to hang clothes upon the 
garden clothesline, as they would become covered with the caterpillars 
and stained with their excrement. Persons walking along the streets 
would become covered with caterpillars spinning down from the b 
To read the testimony of older inhabitants of the town, which has 
been collected and published by the Gipsy Moth committee, reminds 
one vividly of one of the biblical plagues of Egypt. 
During all this time the Medford people had been under the im] 
sion that the insect which they were fighting in their gardens was a 
native species, and they knew it simply as "the caterpillar" or "army 
worm." There seem to have been no local entomologists, and no one 
appears to have taken the trouble to find out definitely what the insect 
might be. In June, 1889, Mr. John Stetson took a specimen to lion. 
William E. Sessions, secretary of the State board of agriculture, for iden- 
tification. The insect was new to Mr. Sessions, who advised .Mr. Stet- 
son to send it to the State Agricultural Experiment Station at Amherst. 
This was done, and in the absence of Professor Fern aid in Europe, his 
wife, who is fortunately a learned entomologist herself, was able, after 
searching through the European books, to identify the insect as the 
larva of the well-known Gipsy Moth of Europe. The fact was immedi- 
ately announced through the newspapers, and the writer, together with 
many others, gained his first knowledge of the occurrence through the 
"New England Farmer" of July 13, 1889. 
A REVIEW OF THE STATE LEGISLATION. 
The tirst combined effort to check the caterpillar was immediately 
undertaken. A town meeting was held on July L5, 1889, and the sum 
of $300 for the care of shade trees was appropriated, to be expended 
under the direction of the road commissioners. Men were employed to 
scrape off the e^^x clusters from shade trees, and much money and effort 
were expended by citizens on their own premises, in November an 
illustrated bulletin was issued, in an edition iA' 15,000 copies, by Profi 
Fernald, at the State Agricultural Experiment Station. It was mailed 
to taxpayers in Medford and vicinity, and was printed in full in one of 
the local papers of December 6, It was found during that winter that 
the insect was SO DUmerous and SO widely distributed that the town 
authorities could not successfully tight it and the legislature was 
