24 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
ranged from 4 to 4 of a mile in width. The outbreak occurred 
on Graham mountain, some 13 miles southeast of Arkville on the 
west side of a ridge running in a southwesterly direction and at an 
altitude of approximately 3700 feet. The caterpillars were so 
numerous that practically all the younger beech trees and the lower 
branches of the larger trees were completely defoliated, and in a 
few instances trees 35 to 40 feet high were entirely stripped of 
leaves, the pest devouring everything except the midrib and larger 
lateral veins. 
Early history. This leaf feeder is best known on account of 
the serious injuries inflicted by the caterpillars on the shade trees 
of New York, Philadelphia and other cities prior to about 1880. 
Mr A. R. Grote, writing of this species in 1881, states that this 
pest used to be so common in Brooklyn when he attended school 
there in 1857 and subsequently, “that the horse-chestnuts, elms and 
maples, the latter especially, became completely defoliated and the 
brown measuring worms used to hang down and cover the side- 
walks ultimately to the great discomfort of passers by.” The. 
situation in Brooklyn was so serious in 1861, according to Lintner, 
that the Common Council contemplated passing an ordinance com- 
pelling the removal of all linden trees from the- public streets. 
Other writers in 1806 and later allude to the great injuries inflicted: 
by these caterpillars upon shade trees, particularly those of Phila- 
delphia. A paragraph in Popular Science Monthly for ‘1881 
[4 :381] states that “ for several years the measuring worm preyed 
on the leaves of the trees in Philadelphia to such an extent that 
early in the summer scarcely any foliage would be left remaining.” 
This condition continued till the introduction of the English spar- 
row, which latter, though a serious pest on many accounts, was 
the means of ridding our cities of this voracious measuring worm. 
The benefit resulting from the activity of the bird, appears to have 
been short-lived, as we now have in the white marked tussock 
moth, Heterocampa leucostigma Abb. & Sm, a pest 
that appears to be fully as destructive as the species under discus- 
sion, though in some respects more easily controlled. | 
This measuring worm is now c@ming into prominence as a 
destructive enemy of forest trees. Prof. J. H. Comstock, in his 
report for 1880, states that specimens of this Geometrid were 
received from Mr Adam Davenport of Morgantown, Fannin co., 
Ga. with the statement that the insects had first been observed in 
the county two years before, and that they had spread rapidly and 
