AND OTHER INJURIOUS INSECTS OF I907 AND I908. IO5 



Fig. -ISa. Cottony Maple Scale. Original. 



trees ore dormant, will kill the adult seales and the contained eggs. 

 Spraying a tall tree, however, is difficult and sometimes impossible. 

 IVhen but a few are present on a vine or shrub they may easily be got 

 rid of with a bucket sprayer, or even killed by touching them with 

 kerosene. Or they may be picked off and destroyed. 



This scale has many natural enemies, both predaceous and para- 

 sitic, which unknowingly assist us in our work against it. 



Life History: It belongs to the family Coccidae, which contains 

 all the scale insects, and its life history resembles in general that of 

 other scales. Briefly, the young lice hatch in the spring and early 

 summer, immediately migrate to the leaves, and temporarily become 

 fixed. Sucking the sap from the leaves, they rapidly increase in size, 

 moutling a number of times as they grow. The scales undergo a 

 metamorphosis, emerge from pupal case as minute two-winged in- 

 sects, mate with the females and die ; the impregnated females later 

 migrate to the twigs and pass the winter fixed to the same. The fol- 

 lowing spring the developing eggs cause the body of the female to 

 increase in size, and late in May and in June these eggs are laid in the 

 cottony growth which the female has secreted at the posterior end of 

 the body. In the above photograph the cottony (waxy) secretion is 

 full of eggs. After laying from i.ooo to 2,000 eggs the female dies, 

 probably in July. 



The insect feeds not only on the trees above indicated, but upon 

 various species of maple, upon wild grape, oak, basswood, hackberry, 

 currant, locust, sumac, box elder, willow, woodbine (Ampelopsis), etc. 



