344 



I \SKCTS AND 



SCALE PARASITE. 



them will be females, ready to lay more eggs. In one 



season, if none of the descendants of the first pair were 



destroyed, the offspring 

 would equal the unimag- 

 inable number of 2 fol- 

 lowed by twenty-three 

 ciphers. One fly " swat- 

 ted " in the spring means 

 many less in the sum- 

 mer and fall. 



252. The San Jose Scale. 

 The house fly is a 

 household pest; the San 

 Jose scale is a pest of the 

 orchard and garden. 

 And a destructive pest it 



is. Orchard after orchard has been destroyed by it. 



Entire neighborhoods have lost nearly every fruit tree. 



Farmers at first seemed 



helpless in the presence 



of its ravages. Many 



of them had never heard 



of spraying fruit trees, 



when this insect appeared 



in this country, and quite 



a ievt did not believe 



that spraying would be 



an effective method of 



controlling it. 



No pest, however, has 



created such an interest WQRK op THE ScALE PARASITE 



in spraying as the San 



Jose" scale has. And in a sense, while its damages have 



been tremendous, the interest it has aroused in the neces- 



