14 SCALE-INSECTS 



Food-plants. Found abundantly, May 13, on leaves of the 

 creosote bush (Larrea mexicana) ; occasionally on the stems also. 

 It is usually on the underside of the leaf, which is small and very 

 nearly covered by the felted sac. Young specimens were also found 

 this date, which were beginning to exude a sac, though the eggs 

 found in the sacs of adult females were unhatched. It was ob- 

 served that the whitish sacs were likely to escape notice among 

 the young fruit of the Larrea, which was just setting and was cov- 

 ered with a whitish, woolly pubescence. 



NO. ix. PALMER'S ICERYA (leery a palmer i Riley and Howard ). 



Plate II, figs. 1 and 2. 



This scale does not, so far as the writer is aware, occur in New 

 Mexico. As will be seen, however, it becomes very desir- 

 able to treat it here, since it is not unlikely that it may some 

 day reach us. The adult stages are as yet unknown to science, and 

 consequently can not be described. A description of the first and 

 second larval stages will be found in Insect Life, vol. iii, pp. 104-5, 

 but is too technical to be inserted here. The larvae are apparently 

 reddish-yellow in color, but their cast skins are white. 



Food-plants. This species was found by Dr. Edward Palmer 

 July 30, 1887, on the Muscat of Alexandria grape, at San Jose de 

 Guaymas, nine miles north of Guaymas proper, in Sonora, Mexico. 

 The specimens found were only the younger stages, and were fixed 

 alon^the main ribs of the leaf, principally on the under side. This 

 would prove a new and most undesirable pest to our Muscat grapes 

 if introduced here, and with the Santa Fe K. R. connections be- 

 tween Guaymas and this territory it is by no means an impossibil- 

 ity. All vines brought from Old Mexico should be most thoroughly 

 overhauled before they are allowed to enter American territory. 



Parasites. It is reported in Insect Life, 1. c., that the pupa- 

 rium of a dipterous parasite, apparently of the family Phoridae, 

 was plainly to be seen within one of the mounted larvae of the 

 second stage. 



