141 



PACIFIC COAST WORK OF THE DIVISION OF ENTOMOLOGY* 



By Prof. W. A. Henry, Madisou, Wis. 



Several days were spent in company with Mr Coquillett, of Los An- 

 geles, in visiting fruit farms at various points in that vicinity and not- 

 ing tlie destructive effects of the white scale and red scale, and the ef- 

 forts in progress to check their ravages. At Orange, in Orange County, 

 the destruction of citrus trees by the red scale has been great, and 

 only a few more years would sufiice to leave that section withoutany such 

 trees if remedies to check the destruction had not been put in operation 

 the present season. The Santa Anna vine disease has destroyed most 

 of the grape-vines, and every orange orchard shows in a greater or less 

 degree the attacks from the red scale. Everj- stage from thriftness to 

 death itself was noted. In some orchards only the yellow-spotted char- 

 acter of the leaves showed the presence of the scale just beginning its^ 

 fatal work ; in others the ends of the branches were leafless and dead, 

 the interior portions of the top yet carrying leaves, though little or no 

 fruit. Still other orchards had but the stumps of the orange trees left, 

 all of the limbs to the size of one's arm having been killed by the scale 

 and removed with the saw. From these stumps green shoots showed 

 sigus of life, and if care was given promised to renew the value of the 

 orchard. The careless treatment of the land showed as plainly as the 

 trees themselves the discouragement of the people. 



Usually an orange orchard in southern California receives the best 

 of care, and the carefully-tilled soil lying loose without a weed in sight 

 and as level as a floor delights the lover of thrift and good tillage. In 

 many orchards weeds cover the ground and form thickets 5 or 6 feet 

 high, so dense that a man can hardly get through them. The dead and 

 dying orange trees among these weeds stand like monuments marking 

 the deadly march of the insidious, insignificant, but wonderfully fatal 

 scale. In com^iany with Mr. Hamilton we visited the orchard in which 

 Mr. Coquillett was conducting spraying experiments with resin-soap 

 solutions. I will refer to these experiments again later on. We also 

 visited many other groves in all stages of thrift and decay, from those 

 bearing heavy crops to those with nothing but the stumps standing. It 

 was very apparent that those who had fought this scale the most vig- 

 orously, even though very imperfectly heretofore, are coming out the 

 best iu the end, and that those who early gave up and neglected their 

 orchards will sufler far the most heavily. One orchard near the Cali- 

 fornia Central Railroad station, at Orange, of 8j0 seedling trees, showed 

 the ends of the branches already dead, and there were scales enough on 

 the leaves to so reduce the vitality of the trees the present season that 



*Extracted from a report submitt'ed to the Secretary of Agriculture (see the special^ 

 notes m this number, p. 125). 



