90 DESTRUCTIVE INSECTS OF VICTORIA : 



confine its attacks to one species of Eucalypt, being found 

 upon at least half-a-dozen. This scale has never yet been 

 found on orchard trees, with the exception of a guava and 

 a myrtle in a nursery ; and, as both of these belong to the 

 same family, it is still more remarkable how this insect 

 collects its food plant. This scale may be found more or 

 less in the bush all the year round, but is most plentiful 

 about the middle of October and November. 



The larvae vary in colour from yellowish to dull-red, are 

 very small and active, and as soon as they are hatched out 

 they crawl over the twigs till they find a hiding place. 

 The full-grown female coccid is enclosed in a rounded, 

 thick, felted, cotton sac, varying in colour from white to 

 creamy -yellow, dark- orange, or even dull-red, attached 

 to the bark at the base, with the apex opening out into a 

 rounded orifice closed below at the tip of the abdomen, 

 which lies level with the opening. These cottony sacs 

 are closely packed against each other, so that the whole 

 stem is frequently covered for inches right round. Though 

 these sacs are naturally of the above colours, they are 

 frequently smothered with fumagine, caused by the honey 

 dew or superfluous juice of the plant. This they suck up 

 in such quantities that they cannot retain it, but discharge 

 it in the form of a fine spray, which, falling on the 

 bark and foliage, forms a food for the smutty fumagine, 

 the minute spores of which cover it and soon change it into 

 a black skin. Each of these little egg-like sacs contains a 

 female, which is capable of laying several hundreds of 

 eggs; these soon produce larvae, further covering the 

 infested tree. 



Although this scale was only described by Mr. Maskell 

 in 1892, it was well known in Victoria in the early days, 

 the late Eraser Crawford and Mr. Tepper having paid 

 considerable attention to it. It was photographed by 

 Mr. Crawford as Eriococcus eucalypti, a most appropriate 

 specific name. In the early fifties I first saw it in the 



