COMMON GUM SCALE. 91 



Moorabbin district, and since that time I have seen it in 

 nearly every portion of Victoria which I have visited. 



In most cases of scale insects, a vigorous growth will 

 enable the affected plant to at any rate partly resist the 

 attack, but with this scale it is different, as I have seen 

 young saplings of Blue Gum, E. globulus, which were at 

 the time making extraordinary growth, killed right out. 

 The insects are in such vast numbers that spraying and 

 other means adopted have but little effect upon them. 

 In the Victorian bush, at any rate, the plants selected for 

 attack are saplings of almost every kind of Eucalypt, and 

 I have seen it both on the leathery foliage of E. alpina, also 

 upon the Snow Gums at the Alps, where for several months 

 of the year snow reigns supreme. In the Alpine regions 

 of the State this scale does not appear to make much 

 headway, which fact may be accounted for by the tough 

 foliage of some of the Eucalypts in those places, and the 

 effects of the freezing and the snow combined. 



In New Zealand, this pest, which had probably been 

 introduced from either Victoria or Tasmania, bade fair 

 to put an end to the newly-made plantations of Blue Gums 

 and other Eucalypts, and the situation may be described 

 in Mr. Kirk's own words : 



" The appearance of an affected plantation was most 

 uninviting. All the small saplings were completely covered 

 with dense masses of the female sacs tightly packed 

 together, and the smaller branches of the larger trees were 

 similarly affected, while the large amount of honey dew 

 excreted by the insects was responsible for a great quantity 

 of black fungus, probably Fumago vagens, which covered 

 the boles and leaves of the trees with a dense, black, sooty 

 envelope. It was quite ' impossible to walk through a 

 plantation without one's clothes being stained witn the 

 dark-coloured juice of the female sac, which was exuded 

 whenever a sac was touched or brushed against. On all 



