3 6 EUCALYPTUS. 



trade wind. Every three or four years, great numbers of 

 blue gum seedlings have come up about the town. These 

 have been taken up by the people and sold to the nur- 

 series. The years of these seedlings have been ones of 

 more than average rain fall. The blue gum is at home 

 at Santa Monica. 



At Kinneloa the blue gum does well in strong soil. On 

 the very light sandy places without water or cultivation 

 trees have died of drought. In the late summer of years 

 following a season of light rains nearly all the trees in 

 sandy wastes have lost foliage to a perceptible extent, but 

 in spite of all this I have cut considerable fire wood from 

 a sand wash plantation and the trees are now coming out 

 again vigorously from the stumps. At Santa Monica there 

 is a scale on the blue gums that I have seen only on the 

 fruit. It seems to do no harm and looks to me like our 

 willow scale. It may be appropriate to mention that in 

 Australia there is a scale, a species of Lecanium, that in- 

 fests both the red and manna gums. This scale causes a 

 viscid sweet juice to exude from the tree and to drop on 

 the leaves and branchlets, which is very attractive to ants. 

 In this effect we are reminded of the black scale and its 

 sweet secretion on our orange trees. It is probably very 

 lucky that our Eucalyptus have been imported by seed 

 thus avoiding the introduction of this scale. The impres- 

 sion prevalent in California that all Eucalypti are free 

 from insect pests is not in accordance with the reports from 

 Australia in regard to the Lecanium as well as in regard 

 to certain cicadae. Some of these latter do considerable 

 injury by boring while others eat the tree leaves. Baron 

 Von Mueller reports that these foliage eaters seem to be 

 increasing in Australia. Quite frequently extensive districts 



