1 895.] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 153 



DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 



Edited by Prof. JOHN B. SMITH, Sc. D., New Brunswick, N. J. 



THE SAN JOSE SCALE. No. 4, of volume vii of "Insect Life," con- 

 tains an article on this subject by Mr. L. O. Howard, in which he adds to 

 the life-history of the insect, gives a. record of what insecticide experi- 

 ments have been made and states the distribution of the species so far 

 as known at the present time. An interesting suggestion is made that 

 possibly the scale is confined to the upper austral fauna in the East, and 

 that it will not trespass to any extent upon the transition regions. The 

 facts so far as we know them in New Jersey support this, because in spite 

 of all my inquiries, I have not found any trace of the scale north of the 

 Red Shale, and this in New Jersey certainly marks a distinct region. In 

 fact this shale, upon which New Brunswick is situated, seems to belong 

 to a distinctly more northern faunal region than many points further north; 

 but interesting as this speculation may be, it is not what I intended to 

 say on this subject. Mr. Howard has again pointed out that the scale 

 was largely distributed from New Jersey, and his conclusions seems to be 

 that the insect has so well established itself that we can scarcely hope i<> 

 exterminate it ; that is, it occurs in so many different places that it will 

 remain unnoticed in some until it gets beyond practical control. It is 

 possible that Mr. Howard is right, and 1 have been regretfully forced 

 toward the same conclusion, without being thereby induced to cease 

 efforts looking towards its extermination. The location of the New Jer- 

 sey nurseries has been published in the agricultural journals, and. as 

 nothing can be gained by concealment, much may be gained by a plain 

 statement of the facts as they exist at the present time. 



Plum Trees bearing the scales were introduced into New Jersey at about 

 the same time by the Messrs. Parry, at Parry, Burlington County, N. J., 

 and by the J. T Lovett Co., at Little Silver, Monmouth County, N. J. 

 These two localities are at opposite sides of the State, the one near the 

 Delaware, the other close to the Atlantic Coast; both are on approxi- 

 mately the same formation, although Little Silver is more than 2o // north 

 of Parry. At Little Silver all the infested trees were grown one year, 

 some of them longer, in a plot upon which was a long row of bearing 

 Bartlett pear trees. The original plum trees were used to bud from, some 

 were sold and all have long since disappeared; but .from them the prar 

 trees became infested. This row of bearing pear trees has been the point 

 from which the nursery stock in the vicinity has been annually infested. 

 At the time when I first saw the trees in the Spring of 1894, they were 

 literally covered to the extreme tip of the twigs with the scale; it seemed 

 as if there was scarcely room for another insect to fasten itself anywhere 

 upon the bark, and many of the trees were practically dead. Mr. Lovett 

 had already directed that these be taken out ; not because they were 



