84 FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT 



other gentry of his family, he has no proboscis, (having lost it when 

 shedding the larval skin), but near the place where it naturally would 

 be are a couple of ocular tubercles, which give him the appearance 

 of having four eyes — two above and two below. As Signoret has 

 proved, and as may easily be seen by crushing the head, these tu- 

 bercles are directly connected, by a pigmental substance, with the 

 eyes, and they doubtless convey the power of sight ; for the superior 

 eyes can be of little service to the possessor as he crawls over the 

 arched coverings of the other sex. The penis is about as long as the 

 abdomen, and is protected and covered by two valves ; and the hind 

 wings are replaced by two fusiform balancers, which terminate in a 

 long, delicate hook, and which hold and give strength to the front 

 wings, which are spatulate in form and traversed with but two veins. 



Frail and delicate as these little beings appear, they are yet pos- 

 sessed of wonderful nerve-force and wing-power ; for the few days of 

 life allotted to them are days of great activity, and in the breeding 

 jar they keep up an almost constant wing- vibration, and are never at 

 rest, except when the temperature is unusually low. 



In his excellent account of the closely- allied Pine-leaf scale. Dr. 

 LeBaron (Ills. Rep. 1, p. 88) gives expression to the following sen- 

 timent: 



" Fixed immovably to the surface on which she reposes, and hid- 

 den from view beneath the shadow of her vaulted carapace, but 

 dimly conscious, we may presume, of some unfilled requirement of 

 her being, the helpless female Coccus awaits the addresses of her 

 unknown and invisible paramour. Nor does she wait in vain. Of all 

 the countless myriads of these lowly creatures which congregate upon 

 the bark of the apple-tree, or whiten with their spotless phylacteries 

 the foliage of the pine, not one, so far as we know, fails to be called 

 to enact the offices of maternity. Nature, in the universality of her 

 providence, takes them in her charge and ministers to their necessi- 

 ties, and no unloved or unfruitful virgin is permitted to languish in 

 the halls of the CoccidcB.'''' 



However beautiful and even rational this view may be in the ab- 

 stract, I have serious doubts of its correctness in point of fact, espe- 

 cially with regard to the Oyster-shell species. Nothing in the past 

 history of this insect has been more noteworthy than the failure on 

 the part of entomologists to discover the male. It is barely possible 

 that this failure may be attributable to negligence and oversight, or 

 that other circumstances may have contributed to it, such as the pro- 

 bable facts that the males hatch out earlier than the females, and that 

 they are naturally less numerous — each being able to serve several 

 females, as Reaumur found to be the case with another species. But 

 with such careful observers as Walsh and Shimer, and with Dr. Le 

 Baron himself, surrounded by infested trees at his home, in Geneva, it 

 would hardly seem probable. When, also, I recall my own observa- 

 tions in past years, in Northern Illinois, and my attempts to solve the 



