No. 4.] INJURIOUS INSECTS. 157 



assistants, Mr. Lounsbury, to examine nurseries in the east- 

 ern part of the State. A full account of Mr. Lounsbury 's 

 discovery in several places was published in the Crop Report 

 for August, 1895, and also in the report of the Massachu- 

 setts Agricultural College for 1896. By direction of the 

 committee of the Hatch Experiment Station, I sent Mr. 

 R. A. Cooley, one of my assistants, early last May to ex- 

 amine the nurseries in this State, and after careful and 

 painstaking examination of twenty-five, he was able to dis- 

 cover the San Jose scale in but three nurseries. Mr. A. H. 

 Kjrkland, my assistant in the gypsy moth work, had pre- 

 viously visited two of these three nurseries at the request 

 and expense of the owners, and, finding them infested with 

 the San Jose scale, had given them advice and explicit direc- 

 tions how to exterminate the pest. It was in one of these 

 nurseries that Mr. Lounsbury first found the San Jose scale. 



I think the owners of these three infested nurseries are 

 keenly alive to the fact that it will prove ruinous to their 

 trade to send out infested stock ; and they are taking every 

 precaution to avoid it, two of them having employed Mr. 

 Kirkland to take charge of removing and burning all infested 

 stock, while the other one has employed Mr. Cooley. These 

 nursery owners seem to realize the ftict that the laws of 

 trade are as inexorable as the ancient laws of the Medes and 

 Persians, which were said to have been written in blood, and 

 that, if they wish to sell nursery stock, it must be free from 

 the San Jose scale. 



There is one point to which I want to call attention. 

 Prof. F. M. Webster had some twigs sent him, to see if 

 there were any San Jose scales on them. There were no 

 scales to be seen on the twigs, but he happened to cut 

 through a bud, and there was a San Jose scale behind that 

 bud, entirely out of sight. If a person is going into a 

 nursery and is going to pronounce that nursery absolutely 

 free from the San Jose scale, it would be necessary to cut 

 every bud off the trees, and even then I should doubt if he 

 could be sure. 



The young San Jose scales are born alive, and when they 

 escape from under the scale of the mother appear as minute, 

 dull orange-colored objects, scarcely visible to the naked 



