100 SUOKT NOTICES. [1900 



we are able to drive the wash down into the trusses, both before the 

 blossom is open and after the fruit is set. The steam spraying 

 apparatus to which I refer is made by Messrs. Merry weather." — 

 (C. D. W.) 



These little insects are hardly the eighth of an inch long, and from 

 the four wings with which they are furnished being transparent, they 

 are hardly distinguishable by the naked eye. Through a magnifying 

 glass it will be seen that they are usually of a beautiful bright green 

 colour ; the abdomen is pointed ; the head has long hair-like antennae, 

 or horns, furnished at the ends with two minute setcB, or bristles ; and 

 the eyes are sometimes white, with a central black spot, which gives 

 them the appearance of having a pupil. 



In autumn, when the Apple leaves are beginning to turn yellow, 

 the insects are more easily observable, as they may then be found in 

 parties of half-a-dozen or so on a leaf, and are then (at this time of 

 pairing) very varied in colour. Some may be of one colour — green, 

 or red, or white ; others may be variously marked with green and 

 yellow, or green and red, or yellowish with a red or brown tint along 

 the top of the insect from head to tail. 



After pairing the females leave the foliage, and lay their eggs, 

 which are commonly of a white spindle-shape, on various parts of the 

 tree, sometimes in hollows near the end of shoots, sometimes on year- 

 old shoots where there is fine hair. From these eggs the young 

 Apple-suckers hatch in the following April. These little " Chermes," 

 which, like their parents, have six legs, and much resemble them in 

 shape, excepting in being wingless, are of a dirty yellowish colour, 

 with brown abdomen. But (as mentioned before) even the fully- 

 developed " Chermes " being hardly an eighth of an inch long, the 

 distinctions of these little larvae are not discernible by the naked eye. 

 Their presence, however, is indicated by the presence of small opaque 

 little balls, or globules, about the stalks of unopened flower-buds ; and 

 if the cluster be pulled open, the young wingless insect will be found 

 in numbers sucking the juices of the stems of the blossom. 



The young Chermes has the remarkable power of being able to 

 exude a white transparent tubercle (attached by a whitish thread) from 

 the extremity of the body, and if this is removed it can eject another 

 ball and thread. On the second moult it ejects a ball with a thicker 

 thread, and also a great number of fine entangled threads, or small 

 hairs, with which it entirely covers its head and body. 



Later on it turns to the pupal state, for which it fixes itself firmly; 

 the skin splits, and from it the winged Chermes steps out (in about 

 four weeks' time from the laying of the egg), and may appear from the 

 beginning of May to the beginning of June. 



The mischief caused by the Pmjlla is especially by the young insects 



