Scale Insects 279 



abar, Bengal, and in Siam, there is a teeny-weeny 

 mite of a scale from which the beautiful color used 

 by artists, and known as carmine lake, is derived. 



The white cotton scale often infests the branches 

 of the soft maple, sometimes spreading from them 

 to the grape-vine, as it did one season, to the grape- 

 vine in our own back yard. 



Another useful plant louse is the Cochineal bug, 

 which was originally a native of Mexico and was 

 imported from there to Spain and Algiers. We, 

 the boys of yesterday, used to buy the dried Coch- 

 ineal bugs at the drug store with which to color 

 eggs on Easter Sunday. 



The common rose-bug or Aphis is well known 

 to all my readers who have paid any attention to 

 the cultivation of roses. The Baltimore oriole, 

 scarlet tanager and vireo are very fond of these 

 plant lice and I have watched them by the hour, 

 going carefully over a plant and picking off the 

 Jittle green or black bugs which were sucking the 

 juice out of the garden flowering shrubs. The 

 Aphis has a couple of tubes sticking out of its 

 back, through which it can, whenever it feels like 

 it, squeeze out a sweet substance called " honey- 

 dew" of which the ants seem to be particularly fond. 



