UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 
BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY, 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
November 28, 1908. 
Dear Mr. Brewster: 
The gipsy moth is being found here and there, in 
Maine and New Hampshire especially, back in isolated places in the 
woods away from all roads and paths and away even from places where 
temporary portable sawmills have been in operation--in fact in lo- 
calities which do not seem to have been visited by human beings. 
Professor Sanderson, the Director of the New Hampshire Agricultural 
Experiment Station at Durham, himself a trained entomologist, Mr. 
Kirkland, the Superintendent of the Massachusetts force, and Mr. Rogers, 
the Special Agent in charge of the gipsy moth work of this Bureau in 
New England, are all suspecting birds. I have talked over the pos- 
sibility of bird transfers of larvae or adult females with Doctor 
Merriam and Mr. Henshaw, and Mr. Henshaw thinks that it is well nigh 
impossible and Doctor Merriam states that it is almost impossible. 
Mr. Henshaw makes the point that the young larvae crawling on the feet 
or dropping, suspended by a silken thread, upon the back or the head of 
a bird would surely be cleaned off by the bird and devoured. Doct er 
Merriam states that the female moth being attacked by a bird would 
surely have the entire body devoured. Mr. Henshaw suggests that you, 
with your knowledge of birds and with your gipsy moth experience, may 
possibly have made some observations which would bear upon this dif- 

