It Cftttddiati llutomaloubt, 



Vol. XXX. 



LONDON, JULY, 1898. 



No. 7. 



THE IMPORTATION OF THE SAN JOSE SCALE, 

 ASPIDIOTUS PERNICIOSUS, FROM JAPAN. 



BY F. M. WEBSTER, WOOSTER, OHIO. 



In Entomological Neivs, Vol. IX., pp. 95-96, Mr. T. D. A. Cockerell 

 states that Mr. Alexander Craw, quarantine officer at San Francisco, 

 California, had "two or three times" found Aspidiottis perniciosus on 

 trees from Japan, and, notably, on a plum tree that arrived January 2^\}a, 

 1898. 



On April 29th, 1898, the writer found A. perniciosus with Diaspis 

 amygdali on Japan white semi-double Flowering Cherry, received direct 

 from Japan during the winter of 1896-97, the trees having been planted 

 out in an isolated locality during the latter part of April, 1897, and 

 though having been growing in America for nearly or quite a year, their 

 location was sufficient proof that they could not, by any possible chance, 

 have become infested in this country. Only a part of the trees were 

 infested, and these but slightly, the scale being more abundant near the 

 surface of the ground and diminishing in numbers upward, while there 

 were none to be found on the branches. The trees were small, being 

 only about a half inch in diameter at base. 



A lot of stock, belonging to the same varieties as those above 

 mentioned, Prunus pandula and P. pseudo-ceraceus, that had also been 

 imported directly from Japan and from the same firm, but during the 

 winter of 1897-8, was then examined. Unlike the first lot, these trees 

 had never been removed from the storehouse where they had been 

 removed from the boxes in which they were imported. These trees 

 were smaller than the others, having evidently been arch grafted, on 

 older stock of some variety of cherry, by cutting ofif the original top and 

 leaving a stump about six or eight inches in height and an inch or more 

 in diameter, the cleft for the insertion of the graft being made after the 

 usual manner, but instead of using a scion in the ordinary way, a young 

 growing shoot of the flowering cherry had been inserted into the cleft at 

 one side of the stump at the top, and the juncture covered with grafting 



