BEECH-BARK ‘‘ FELT-SCALE.”’ q 
was doing great harm to the Beech trees in his woods at Rangemore. 
The pieces of Beech-bark, of which good specimens were successively 
sent me for examination, were almost entirely covered with a whitish 
coating of a flocculent formation (see figure 1, p. 6). This coating 
was formed of flattish irregular masses of various thicknesses, from 
the sixteenth of an inch, or even less, up to about three times that 
thickness, and thus formed, in some places, only a slight covering to 
the bark, but was commonly of an aggregation of little soft irregular 
lumps, with the dark bark showing here and there amongst them, and 
looking much as if badly mixed whitewash, with the lumps of lime 
not properly dissolved, had been thrown at the bark of the tree. 
In this white coating I found the little orange Coccids, which 
secrete the felt-like* material, numerously present. The shape of 
these was scarcely discernible by the naked eye, as they are not as 
much as half a line in length; but when magnified, they could be 
seen to be almost globose in shape, orange or yellow in colour, and 
with soft bodies, sometimes lying singly, and sometimes in numbers 
near together. 
In the supply of specimens, sent me on June 4th, I found Coccids 
numerously present beneath the white felt. These were of various 
sizes, the smallest were somewhat oval, or approaching to a cylindrical 
form, blunt at the extremities, the largest were almost spherical; they 
were mostly pale in colour, but some were of a reddish yellow. The 
spherical specimens were females; those that were somewhat narrowly 
oval were larve. 
These ‘Coccids’’ belong entomologically to the great division of 
‘Scale Insects,” which do mischief by piercing into plant-tissues, and 
drawing away the sap by means of their suckers; but they do not, like 
many kinds (as the Apple-bark Coccus, for instance), form a scale over 
themselves in their mature stage, they are more nearly allied to the 
soft fleshy kind, commonly known as the “‘ Mealy Bug”; and the 
infestation is of considerable interest as a forest insect pest, for, as 
will be seen from the following observations, it is both widely distri- 
buted in this country, and also, unless in situations where treatment 
can be applied, very hurtful to the infested trees. 
In the first communication sent me (on March 5th) by desire of Lord 
Burton, from Rangemore, Burton-on-Trent, it was mentioned as ‘the 
infestation which is destroying all the Beech trees in the woods here.” 
In a further communication by Mr. W. Bennett, from Rangemore, 
sent on April 8rd, he mentioned that the specimens then sent were 
from a tree that was to all appearance dying from the attack, but had 
* As this Scale insect does not appear to have any English name at present, I 
have suggested Beech-bark ‘‘Felt-scale,’”’ as noting the locality and the appearance 
of the infestation. 
