4 INSECTS AFFECTING THE ORANGE. 



and many other plants, and always follows the attacks of Lecanium, 

 Oeroplastes, and other Coccids which produce honey -dew. 



The Gall-berry, Ilex glabra, a wild plant which grows in great abund- 

 ance in the sterile " flat woods" of Florida, and which is much infested 

 by Oeroplastes scale, is often blackened by it over many acres in ex- 

 tent. 



Prof. W. G. Farlow, in a paper entitled " On a Disease of Olive and 

 Orange Trees occurring in California in the Spring and Summer of 

 1875," describes and figures this smut, and shows it to be a fungus. 

 He determines it to be Capnodium citri Berkeley & Desmazieres, a 

 species occurring on Orange, &c., in Europe, and says that it seems 

 nearly or quite identical with the Fumago salicina of older writers. 

 (See Tulasne, "Carpologia Fungorum," PI. XXXIY, Figs. 14 and 20.) 

 In the same paper it is shown, from botanical considerations, that it 

 does not feed on the plant, but on the honey-dew ejected by insects. 



Smut upon orange trees has long been known, and its nature and 

 origin have formed the subject of many curious speculations. 



In -a rare work, published at Nice, in 1806, and entitled "Histoire 

 Xaturelle de la Morf6e, ou de I'Infection de la Famille des Grangers ; par 

 PAbbe" Loquez," this fungus is described, and also the Bark-louse con- 

 nected with it, and the two are treated as jointly constituting a disease 

 of the Orange, which at that -time ravaged the gardens of Italy and 

 southern France.* 



Both the fungus and the insect being nourished, according to the 

 author's view, upon the superabundant juices of the plant, he proposes 

 to remedy the disorders produced by their combined attack by depriv- 

 ing the tree of moisture, and by the dessication of its juices. 



Smut probably does no more injury than would be occasioned by a 

 similar coating of soot or other fine powder coating the leaves and 

 growing parts of the plant. But as it is never seen except in conjunction 

 with the destructive insects above mentioned, it is not very easy to 

 determine what proportion of the damage is attributable to the fungus 

 alone. 



SPLITTING OF FRUIT. Moore, in his treatise on Orange Culture, 

 says: "The cracking of fruit is occasioned by any suspension of the 

 growth of the fruit, and a consequent hardening of the rind, followed 

 by a sudden flow of sap from any stimulating cause, as highly fertil- 

 izing a bearing grove, especially during summer, or a wet spell follow- 

 ing a dry." Certain sap-loving beetles of the family Nitidulid&, arid 

 also vinegar or pomace flies, attack the spli fruit both on the tree and 

 after it has fallen to the ground. The larvre, which they produce in vast 

 numbers, penetrate the pulp, and cause it to rot with great rapidity. 



Many persons, finding the split fruit infested with these grubs and 



* The Bark-louse is called by the author Coccus Jiesperidum Linn. ; but his minute 

 and excellent account of the insect and its habits clearly indicate that it was a 

 species of Mealy-bug (Dactylopim). 



