10 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Mr. Hooker also stated that while at Eagle Pass, Tex., 

 in October, 1907, he collected three species of scales, Cero- 

 plastes cistudiformis Towns. & Ckll., Coccus hesperidum L., 

 and Aulacaspis sp., on mistletoe (Phoradendron flavescens} 

 growing on mesquite in the Military Reservation at that 

 place. Ceroplastes cistudiformis, according to Mrs. Fernald's 

 Catalogue of the Coccidae of the World, has been reported 

 from Mexico and California. The mistletoe furnishes a new 

 food plant for the species. 



Doctor Hopkins stated that the common references to the 

 destruction of hardwood timber by defoliating insects were 

 usually misleading. They give the impression that the trees 

 are killed, when in reality it is only the foliage that is de- 

 stroyed. His observations indicated that the first defolia- 

 tion, or even a second or third annual defoliation, did not 

 perceptibly affect the vitality of some species of deciduous 

 trees, citing as an example a number of young pin oaks 

 (Quercus palustris) on his farm in West Virginia, which 

 had been repeatedly defoliated by Lachnosterna in May during 

 the past ten years, and frequently some of them a second time 

 the same season by Anisota senatoria Hbn., yet their vitality 

 was not impaired, as evidenced by the rapid increase in size and 

 their vigorous condition at the present time. The defoliation 

 of other species of deciduous trees at a critical period in their 

 life activity may prove disastrous, as shown by many of the wil- 

 lows along the Potomac, in the vicinity of Plummers Island, 

 Maryland, which have died, evidently as the direct result of 

 complete defoliation by sawfly larvae in August. About the 

 year 1892, thousands of locust trees (Robinia pseud-acacia) 

 died in West Virginia. After about the third successive year 

 of destruction of the leaves in July and August by the locust 

 leaf-beetle (Odontota dorsalis Thumb.) it was noticed that 

 young sprouts and new leaves appeared on the trees late in 

 the fall. This was followed by severe cold, 15 to 25 below 

 zero, in December and January, and it was thought that the 

 direct cause of death of the trees was due to the freezing 

 following the abnormal condition of new growth as the re- 

 sult of defoliation. 



