ON THE PARASITES OF “ DIASPIS PENTAGONA , 
By L. 0. HOWARD. 
Diaspis pentagona has long been a resident of the Distriet of 
Columbia, surely since 1892, when it was discovered on the 
grounds of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. (Insect Life VI, 
287). Its prevalence in Italy upon the mulberry tree renders it a 
very dangerous enemy of the silk industry in that country, and 
Italian entomologists, notably the late Professor Targioni Tozzetti, 
and Professor Antonio Berlese, have long sought means of era- 
dicating it. Im the absence of records of parasitism it was not 
at first thought to be at all feasible to utilize its natural ene- 
mies. In the summer of 1905, however, Professor Berlese urged 
the writer, in Florence, to send to Italy branches ot trees infe- 
sted by the Diaspis from America in the hope that parasites 
might be reared. Curiously enough, this scale does not seem to 
attack mulberry in the United States, and on the grounds of the 
Department of Agriculture there existed, until within a short time. 
a peach tree literally covered with the scale within a hundred 
yards of mulberry trees which did not become infested. Im the 
spring of 1906, during the writers absence on a second trip to 
Europe, Mr. Marlatt secured a number of branches of lilac from 
the District of Columbia all abundantly infested by the scale, 
and sent them, carefully packed, to Professor Berlese. From these 
scales were bred in Florence three species of parasites: The first, 
Tetrastichus canadensis Ashmead; the second, Prospalta murtfeldtii 
Howard, and the third, a new species of Prospalta. On the wri- 
