BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY AND PLANT QUARANTINE 35 
GYPSY MOTH AND BROWN-TAIL MOTH QUARANTINE ENFORCEMENT 
REGULATORY CHANGES 
Under a revision of Notice of Quarantine No. 45. and supplemental rules and 
regulations, effective November 4. 1935, both lightly and generally infested areas 
remained unchanged. The revision included the addition to the quarantine 
notice of a proviso whereby the Secretary of Agriculture delegated to the Chief 
of the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine authority administratively 
to exempt from restriction certain articles which, owing to the nature of their 
growth, production, or manufacture are considered innocuous as carriers of 
moth infestation. The only revision in the regulations was the addition of 
sections to require that persons to whom certificates or permits are issued shall 
report, at the time of shipment, all consignments of quarantined articles to 
points outside the regulated area. 
For the information of its transit inspectors and interested State officials, 
the Bureau, on February 6, 1936, issued a list of commonly shipped field-grown 
and greenhouse plants for which no gypsy moth certification is required. The 
perennial plants and shrubs listed are ones which under New England growing 
conditions do not have persistent woody stems and therefore could not harbor 
egg clusters of the gypsy moth. In more temperate sections of the country some 
of these plants are hardy enough to persist with woody stems. Examination 
of an individual plant of some of the exempt species in conjunction with transit 
inspection while en route, or terminal inspection in the State of destination, 
would not determine the status of the plant under the quarantine regulations. 
Therefore, the list of border-line plants was prepared and distributed as a guide 
to inspectors obliged to make such determinations. 
CERTIFICATION OF QUARANTINED PRODUCTS 
Inspection activities continued on the basis of 20 districts, with a single inspec- 
tor in each to supervise all inspection requirements under both the gypsy moth 
and Japanese beetle quarantines. When needed during the nursery-shipping 
seasons and in the course of evergreen-products inspection, additional temporary 
employees were assigned to the districts. 
Spruce-bough lot inspection in southern Vermont and western Massachusetts 
started late in October and continued until Christmas. With one exception, all 
lots inspected were found free from egg clusters. Seven temporary inspectors 
were assigned to spruce-bough lot inspection. One inspector was assigned at a 
Christmas-greenery establishment in Westminster, Vt. 
Records for the 1935 season show that 590,105 Christmas trees which origi- 
nated in the lightly infested gypsy moth area were inspected and certified for 
shipment to points outside the regulated areas. This quantity represents a 
34-percent decrease in the number of trees inspected in the same area during the 
1934 Christmas season. This decrease of more than 298,000 trees is attributed 
to the scarcity of good stands of balsam trees in the gypsy moth area and t<> 
losses sustained by shippers who in 1934 sold carloads on consignment. The 
maximum number of temporary inspectors employed during the Christmas-tree 
and greenery inspection was 47. 
Nursery inspection required the assignment of additional inspectors in western 
Maine and western Massachusetts during the fall. Eight temporary men were 
engaged during October and part of November in making field inspection of 
nurseries that ship under joint Japanese beetle and gypsy moth certificates. 
All of the larger nurseries in the joint-certificate area east of the Connecticut 
River were scouted and found uninfested with either insect. 
More infested shipments were found during the last half of July than in any 
similar period for the last 15 years. Inspections throughoul the fiscal year 
resulted in the removal from material destined to nonregulated points *>\' 1,844 
egg clusters. 1.017 larvae, and 434 pupae of the gypsy moth. 
Late in October it was learned that a number of abandoned railroad lines 
were being torn up in southern New Hampshire, and large quantities of steel 
rails were about to be shipped to steel mills outside the infested zones. Through- 
out the winter additional rails were taken up and shipped from northeastern 
Massachusetts and southern Maine. High prices for junk steel accounted for 
this unusual movement of rails from sections heavily infested with the gypsy 
moth. Inasmuch as steel products are not under regulation, voluntary arrange- 
ments were made with the railroads for inspection of all rails that hail not been 
