296 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 6 



brownish yellow color and banded wings. The females may be kept 

 alive for fifty or sixty days by feeding them with glucose and water 

 if not allowed to oviposit. If supplied with suitable hosts for oviposi- 

 tion the life of the female is considerably shortened. A female that 

 Avas kept constantly provided with hosts died apparently of exhaustion 

 after thirty-two days, although it had a constant and copious supply 

 of acceptable food in the honey-dew excreted by the scales. This 

 female deposited 212 eggs during the thirty-two days, and after its 

 death eleven more perfect or nearly mature eggs were found in the 

 oviduct and lower part of the ovarian tubules. Other females that 

 were perhaps less skillfully handled deposited in about the same num- 

 ber of days 91, 98, 99, 103, 116 and 125 eggs, respectively. 



This species of Microterys like all other Encyrtines that we have 

 observed will reproduce freely by parthenogenesis, and is always 

 arrhenotokous under such circumstances; in other words, unfertilized 

 eggs always produce males, and fertilized eggs females. The female 

 in ovipositing is deliberate and circumspect and has the same general 

 habits of other chalcidoids. The process of ovipositing generally 

 takes about Ij to 2 minutes, the exact time being more or less de- 

 pendent upon the resistance met in penetrating the derm of the host. 

 Notes were once taken on a female which oviposited seven times in 

 succession in a single host, all within fifteen minutes. The average 

 time taken for the penetration of the host's derm in this case was fifty- 

 one seconds, the actual periods varying between forty and sevent}^- 

 five seconds. The full period of oviposition in these instances varied 

 from one minute and twenty-five seconds to two minutes and twenty 

 seconds, with an average of one minute and forty-four seconds. 



The female even when confined in a small vial shows considerable 

 judgment in the choice of hosts. The most suitable hosts, or at least 

 those generally chosen first, are newly gravid females which have 

 recently become convex or plump. Such hosts after death have a 

 clear, translucent derm which permits the later stages of the parasite 

 to be studied at leisure. Even these scales frequently produce a few 

 offspring before death ensues, but still older ones are sometimes chosen 

 that produce a large number of young. On the other hand, immature 

 scales as small as 1.5 mm. long may be attacked if larger hosts are 

 not to be found. In the small scales rarely more than one egg is de- 

 posited, but in larger oiies according to their size, two or three even 

 up to six or seven eggs may be normally placed. 



Although it is true that the minimum and maximum amount of food 

 that will support one Microterys larva allows for considerable lati- 

 tude, yet the females seem to have a well-developed instinct for judg- 

 ing the number of eggs that may be safely placed in one host without 



