i88s.] 



NEW-YORK MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



93 



COCCUS, or scale-insect, of the Black Ash. This coccus is of the 

 genus Lecanium. The male is a two-winged creature, which 

 passes through its sportive life in a very short period. But the 

 noticeable member of the family, on account of her endurance, 

 and her attachment to her home, is the female. When very 

 young, she fastens herself to some suitable spot on the ash twig, 

 thrusts her beak into the bark, and lives on the sap of the plant. 

 She now begins to be covered with a shell. This enlarges and 

 hardens into a nearly hemispherical mass firmly attached to the 



Fig. 5. — Pupa Fungus (original). 



twig and about a quarter of an inch in diameter. Here the 

 insect lives and dies, without ever moving from her selected 

 station. She is frequently affected with the fungus last men- 

 tioned, — the Torrubia clavulata, — which, as autumn approaches, 

 bursts through various parts of the rounded shell in little fruit- 

 ing stems about one-tenth of an inch in length. I have collected 

 this fungus on Haight's Island, — an island in the Hudson River, 

 about fifteen miles below Albany, — where it appears to be quite 

 frequent. Sometimes the fruiting stems number from fifteen to 

 nineteen on one insect. Usually the stems are simple, slender, 



