ORANGE INSECTS AND DISEASES. 85 
pieces. As far as I can ascertain by consulting Packard’s Guide, I guess 
it may be a species of Irodes. Is it a common pest ?—|H. C. BEARDS- 
LEE, Painesville, Ohio, July 1, 1883. 
[The tick was a variety of Ivodes bovis.| 
ORANGE Rust MITE, MEALY Bue, AND TAP-RooT DISEASE. 
Having business near Orange Lake during the past week, I visited 
several orange groves. I found all of the Florida varieties of scale- 
insects in abundance. Oranges are already rusty, and the rust mite in 
many places, on both leaves and fruit, in such large numbers as to give 
a distinet coloration, distinguishable at a distance of ten feet. 
But the most destructive insect, at present absorbing all the attention 
of the orange-growers there, is the mealy bug, Dactylopius destructor. 
This insect causes the fruit to rot under the colonies. <A favorite place 
of lodgment is at the stem, under the calyx; the result is, the fruit 
drops. 
I staid there three days to examine methods used and experiment in 
their destruction. f 
The cottony armor repels all watery solutions. 
The methods used are: spraying each separate colony with pure ker- 
osene by means of bellows atomizers; and mechanical action—rubbing 
or pinching each separate colony (by colony [I mean the little clusters 
consisting of from ten to several hundred individuals) ; this is done by 
the fingers. 
I examined the trees that had been treated with the kerosene spray 
and found both the leaves and fruit spotted yellow. I was also in- 
formed that fruit saved in this way two years ago was useless, having 
absorbed the odor of kerosene. The effective progress made by the 
means used is trifling, in consideration of the work to be done. I tried 
experiments with solutions of murvite, sprayed on, but with no good 
result; then tried kerosene butter, using thick, milky solution of mur- 
vite, which combines in exactly the same way as with cow’s milk, and 
found that an effective emulsion could thus be made. 
After using and watching the action of this for some time, I saw that 
the interior insects of a dense mass were protected by the exterior ones; 
further experiments were made to meet this difficulty. By watching 
the men at work I saw that nearly every infested orange was handled 
to turn all of its sides tothe eye; that wherever a large colony found 
lodgment in a fork of twigs or in a depression of the bark they were 
handled, also that the bunches of Spanish moss (Tillandsia) formed 
formidable breeding places. All of these require force for their dislodg- 
nent. 
