406 
The Moths and Butterflies 
dispar , a European species brought to Massachusetts in 1868, and from 
1890 to 1900 fought at the public expense. A gentleman living in Med¬ 
ford, a town of Massachusetts, imported a number of different kinds of Euro¬ 
pean silk-spinning caterpillars in an attempt to find some species which 
might be bred in this country in place of the mulberry silkworm (Bombyx 
mori). Some of the moths escaped from his breeding-cages, and among 
them some gypsy-moths. In a very few years the species had increased to 
such numbers and spread throughout such an extent of woods that it seri¬ 
ously threatened the destruction of all the forest- and shade-trees in north¬ 
eastern Massachusetts. By 1891 it was causing great injury to forest-trees 
over 200 square miles. So far it has been confined because of the whole¬ 
sale operations against it. The State has employed as many as 570 men 
at a time in spraying, egg-collecting, trunk-banding, etc., in the great fight 
Fig. 589.—The California oak-worm moth, Phryganidia cali}ornica. A, eggs on leaf; 
B, just-hatched larva; C, full-grown larva; D, pupa, or chrysalid; E, moth; F, Pint pi a 
behrendsii, parasite of the larva. ( B , much enlarged; D and F, twice natural size; 
others natural size.) 
against the pest and up to 1900 had expended over a million dollars in the 
struggle. The caterpillar when full grown is ij inches long, creamy white, 
thickly sprinkled with black, with dorsal and lateral tufts of long black and 
yellowish hairs. The cocoon is very slight, merely a few silky threads. The 
male moths, expanding 1 \ to 2 inches, are brownish yellow with smoky fore 
wings bearing darker irregular transverse lines and pale hind wings with 
darker outer margins. The females are large, expanding 2\ inches, and 
creamy white in color, with irregular transverse gray or blackish lines. 
