8 SCALE INSECTS. 



Washington of isolated females, it has been estimated that 

 the progeny of a single female during a single season may 

 amount to the enormous number of 3,210,080,400 individu- 

 als. Of course, it is not supposed that all of the young of 

 various broods will survive, but even were half of them de- 

 stroyed through natural causes my estimate is a long way 

 within bounds." 



And again, from another source : "^ 



" There is perhaps no insect capable of causing greater 

 damage to fruit interests in the United States, or perhaps 

 the world, than the San Jose, or pernicious, scale. It is 

 not striking in appearance, and might often remain unrec- 

 ognized, or at least misunderstood; and yet so steadily and 

 relentlessly does it spread over j^ractically all deciduous 

 fruit-trees — trunk, limbs, foliage, and fruit — that it is only 

 a question of two or three years before the death of the 

 plant attacked is brought about, and the possibility of in- 

 jury, which, from experience with other scale enemies of 

 deciduous plants, might be easily ignored or thought insig- 

 nificant, is soon startlingly demonstrated. . . ." 



Its importance was early recognized by Professor Com- 

 stock, who in first describing it in 1880 gave it the sug- 

 gestive name of perniciosus, saying of it that it is the most 

 pernicious scale insect known in this country. The Los 

 Angeles horticultural commission reported in 1890 that if 

 the pest be not speedily destroyed it will utterly ruin the 

 deciduous fruit interests of the Pacific coast. 



Its capacity for evil has been more than demonstrated 

 since its appearance in the East, and it has been, if any- 

 thing, more disastrous to the peach and pear orchards of 

 Maryland, New Jersey, and other eastern and .southern 

 states, than in California and the West. We are therefore 

 justified in the assertion that no more serious menace to 

 the deciduous fruit interests of this country has ever been 

 known. There is no intention here to arouse unnecessary 

 alarm, but merely to emphasize the importance of taking 

 the utmost precautions to prevent its introduction into new 

 localities, and to point out the extreme necessity of earnest 

 effort to stamp it out where it has already gained a foot- 

 hold. 



-Howard and Marlatt, Bulletin No. 3, N. S., U. S. Dept. Agr., 

 Div. Ent. 



