RESOLVED, that the thanks of the conference are hereby tendered to Commissioner of Agriculture Huson for his courtesies and the calling of the conference.
The following "News Items" of no date, but received in the early part of June, shows what action has so far been taken:
Commissioner Huson of the State Department of Agriculture is receiving considerable information relative to a serious outbreak of the hickory bark borer in the vicinity of New York and on Long Island. This borer is the principal cause of the death of thousands of hickory trees. The greatest infested area is in the northern part of New York City, in Westchester County, in Queens and Nassau Counties, though much injury has been observed throughout Suffolk County, particularly along the northern shore of the island. The area of infested hickories is about the same as the territory where the chestnut trees have succumbed to the attacks of the chestnut bark disease. Now that the chestnuts have so nearly disappeared and the fact that the hickory trees are also threatened with entire extermination because of the hickory borer, requests have been made by many citizens, that the Commissioner of Agriculture should exercise such authority as the law gives him in the control of this pest. That the hickory trees that have not been attacked may be saved, or in a very large measure protected has been proven in the Zoological Park and in the parks of Brooklyn. The able superintendents of these two parks have for the last two or three years, been cutting out every infested hickory tree and in that way the other trees are found at this time to be free from insects and they have been saved from certain destruction.
The hickory borer eats its way into the bark of the hickory trees in mid-summer. Eggs are laid which hatch and the grubs feed in peculiar galleries in the bark and between the wood and the bark is such a way as to cut off the flow of the sap, thus causing the death of the trees. These grubs are in these galleries at this time of the year and will remain so until about the middle of June. It is, therefore, necessary that the infested trees be cut and destroyed before that time in order to prevent further widespread of the insects. The Commissioner has been promised the hearty cooperation of many influential and interested citizens in this movement and agents of this Department are on the ground with authority to inspect trees to ascertain the limit of infestation and they have been directed to mark such trees as should be removed and destroyed at once.