1)8 THE COXNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



this covering is the real scale: the creature beneath it is the 

 "louse" or scale insect. About the middle of June this female 

 begins to give birth the living young — four, eight, a dozen a 

 day, according to temperature, and this continues for three or 

 four weeks. The young are also bright yellow, just visible 

 to the unaided eye, with six well developed legs and a pair of 

 feelers. They move about actively for a day or two, rarely 

 get very far away from their place of birth, unless they are 

 carried off on the feet of birds or by other insects, and when 

 they have found a suitable place they come to rest, insert their 

 slender hair-like lancets into the plant tissue and begin to 

 suck. In a few hours they begin to change form, become 

 round and disc like, a fine waxy covering begins to appear and 

 before a night is over a white scale or covering conceals the 

 insect. This white scale becomes creamy gray within a week, 

 then black at the end of two weeks and in about a month, when 

 the insect is sexually mature, it is dirty gray. There is a 

 difference now between males and females. The males be- 

 come winged, get out from beneath the scales and seek the 

 larger scales beneath wdiich the females remain, grub-like and 

 totally motionless except for the continual pumping of sap. 

 The males are short lived and do not feed. 



In about five weeks from the date of birth reproduction 

 begins, and as the period extends to more than a month and 

 new females are coming in every day ; there is no time after 

 mid-July when larvcC cannot be found on an infested tree. The 

 height of the breeding is in mid or end-September, when 

 badly infested trees sometimes appear as if dusted with pollen, 

 so numerous are the crawling larvae. After the beginning of 

 October matters slacken gradually, some larvae being found in 

 New Jersey as late as December, and in the Southern States 

 and in California throughout the winter. 



It has been calculated that a single pair of the insects, start- 

 ing early and continuing late, might produce a progeny of 

 1,000,000,000 in a single season, \\diich explains the rapid 

 infestation of trees where only "a sprinkling" was observed 

 early in the season. 



Breeding slackens early in October, although some females 

 begin after that date; but no female that begins breeding in 



