120 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. Smith : Will yon please explain this scale so that we will know it? 



Prof. Webster: If I had known you were going to want some such 

 information, I could just as well have brought some twigs with me, some 

 I have baked pretty thoroughly; but there is nothing in America to 

 which I can compare it, and nothing that you could readily confuse with 

 it. The insects are very small, round, and flat, and cover the tree 

 thickly wherever they become established. They have a gray appearance. 

 The scurvy bai-k-louse is larger, and spreads out less compactly over the 

 tree. These form compact masses, or gray patches; and if you take your 

 finger you can scrape them off, like scurf, and among this there will be lit- 

 tle yellow particles which are the young. That is the only way I can 

 describe it to you. I only regret that I did not bring some with me. If 

 you once see it you can not mistake it. 



This (exhibiting illustration in the Annual Report for 1894) is a good 

 deal enlarged of course. Those on the fruit are larger. But these you 

 will notice particularly at this time of year will be on branches or twigs, 

 and of this shape. The figure in the upper left hand corner shows the 

 form, only greatly magnified. A full-grown female is not larger than 

 the head of a pin. The male only has wings. It spreads by the young 

 being carried by the winds or on the feet of birds, as the young get on 

 their toes and are sometimes scattered in that way, though not often. 1 

 can clearly trace it to the action of the winds. 



Mr. Willard: I would like to ask if they are similar in their habits of 

 reproduction to the oyster-scale bark-louse, the eggs being laid in the fall 

 and the parents dying? 



Prof. Webster: They do not lay eggs. The young are hatched in the 

 body of the mother, and they reproduce by giving birth to young. They 

 lie dormant in winter and begin to reproduce in the spring. 



Mr. Williams: Has this scale been discovered in Michigan orchards? 



Prof. Webster: I don't think it has been reported. 



Mr. Morrill : There are other scales that were shown at the meeting of 

 this society at the Agricultural College, of which considerable was said, 

 in New York, and it was shown there as coming, I think, from Port 

 Huron. Prof. Davis had that sample, a thick mass of them on a limb, 

 and then he had samples of elm scale which he got somewhere near the 

 Agricultural College grounds, but I don't know whether they attacked 

 the fruit trees or not. Perhaps some of these scientific gentlemen can tell 

 us about that. 



Mr. Williams: Is there probably a certain latitude north of which 

 this scale will not work? Has it been oflflcially defined, so that we could 

 feel sure that our Michigan climate would be too severe to allow of it 

 troubling us seriously? Is there any such encouragement for us? 



Prof. Webster: It has been suggested by entomologists that there is 

 a line beyond which it would not live. But it has been found beyond this 

 line, and that, too, on the experiment grounds of an agricultural college. 

 It is not living there now, understand, by any means. It will live as 

 far north as northern Idaho. Of course, the climate may be milder there 

 than in some parts of Michigan, but I would be very cautious on banking 

 very much on latitude or climate. I don't know of its occurrence 

 north, of Massachusetts, except in Idaho and on the Pacific coast. It 

 occurs there clear up to British Columbia; but you know the influence of 



