26 
EASTERN SHADE TREE CONFERENCE 
ditions complicating the situation the answer is still more difficult. 
Two such weather complications have entered into the picture in con¬ 
nection with the present outbreak; the extremely cold winter of 1934 
and, of course, the hurricane. 
The most severe previous outbreak in Vermont of which we have defi¬ 
nite record occurred between 1895 and 1900. This was very completely 
recorded in a bulletin of the Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station 
prepared by Dr. George Perkins in 1901. Quotation from this bulletin 
is interesting for comparative purposes, though the comparison is not 
one of contrast. Much of Dr. Perkins’ 40 year old report fits the present 
situation almost exactly except that it varies somewhat as to location of 
outbreak. For instance, he quotes a correspondent as follows: 
“I send you a report of the ravages of Clisiocampa disstria for the year 
1899. It was very much worse than last year, in the village, so that 
many of the people who last year did not pay much attention to the 
cocoons on their buildings are very much alive now to their presence. 
The number of the worms in the village was so great that the village 
authorities took hold of the matter and had all the trees alongside of the 
road covered with bandages of burlaps and these were kept well tarred. 
The trees therefore do not look very badly there. In the woods and 
sugar orchards the damage has been very great, though some of the 
places that were attacked last year have gone free this year while other 
places that escaped last year have suffered severely this year. They 
have eaten every green tree and bush, I think, except the cut-leaved 
maple and the sumachs which do not seem to have been touched. The 
cocoons are on every sort of tree, not excepting these two.” This cut- 
leaf maple is, I expect, the common silver maple which thrives in low¬ 
lands of northern Vermont. 
Another quotation is of particular interest because of certain points 
raised. Mr. Lyman Hutchinson of Randolph wrote him thus: 
“My sugar orchard was the first to be attacked by forest worms in 
this section. Two years ago in June (1898) it looked as though fire had 
burned the foliage over the whole wood lot, and again last year they took 
what trees survived the first trimming. Now it is a fact that the first 
year’s trimming killed more than two hundred out of eight hundred 
trees. And the result of the last trimming is that I have not two hun¬ 
dred trees in my orchard that have life enough left to ever run sap for 
sugar. We have cut from one to two hundred of those maples. The 
most of them were entirely dead, the rest had only a few lower limbs 
