44 
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 16 
conditions has been demonstrated time and time and again and in con¬ 
sideration of the fact that those best acquainted with the pest do not 
hesitate to state that it is clearly practicable to prevent further spread? 
The border of the infested area is now stretching toward a highly culti¬ 
vated region with a minimum of rough, forested ground and in view of 
such unusually favorable conditions for checking spread existing from 
Long Island Sound northward from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Danbury, 
thence to the Harlem Valley in New York State and northward and 
westward through the Hudson and Champlain Valleys and thence 
westward along the New York border to Lake Ontario, we would seriously 
suggest the advisability of actually preventing further spread beyond some 
such line, because such limitations would mean freedom for at least a series 
of years for all territory to the west. In other words, this means the 
application of exterminative measures to a strip instead of to a circum¬ 
scribed area. 
We would also call attention to the fact that the total expenditures 
in Massachusetts in 1921 for control of the Gipsy Moth in the then 
infested area, probably less than three-fourths of the total area of the 
State, amount to the tremendous sum of $836,108.40 according to 
figures compiled under the direction of the Massachusetts State Forest¬ 
er, William A. L. Bazeley and kindly placed at our disposal. Should 
the entire State of New York become infested and the same ratio pre¬ 
vail, the annual cost for suppressive work in the State would exceed 
five and one-quarter million dollars. It should also be noted that in 
1897 and again in 1899 the late Professor C. H. Femald, then Consulting 
Entomologist of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, which 
latter was then in charge of the Gipsy Moth work, estimated the cost 
of exterminating the Gipsy Moth at $1,575,000.00, the work to be 
continued over a period of fifteen years. 
Briefly, this was an estimate which had the approval of experts en¬ 
gaged in the work, the men by all means best qualified to pass upon the 
situation. The project was allowed to lapse, the opinion of experts 
was set to one side and as a consequence the total cost to all agencies 
in the infested portions of the State of Massachusetts, comprising far 
from the entire area, amounted in 1921 to more than half the total esti¬ 
mated cost of extermination in 1897 and that for what was really un¬ 
satisfactory control. As a further consequence the State of New York 
is threatened with heavy annual expenditures because of an insect which 
could have been exterminated and should not have been allowed to 
escape. 
