86 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO 



greater or amounting to probabilities, that we shall lean no more or less to the pessimistic 

 than to the opti nistic, but weigh every fragment of information, be it negative or 

 affirmative, with equal care and discretion. 



The points that I have tried to emphasize are : — (1) That a form of animal life may 

 be distasteful to other forms, and so far as these are concerned, warningly colored ; but 

 neither the one or the other, where the form to be protected from is not a persistent and 

 perpetual enemy, that, unrestrained, would threaten the extinction of the form preyed 

 upon ; (2) That a mimicking f jrm may profit by a protective resemblance, not only where 

 both it and the form mimicked ccur together, but throughout the area of distribution of 

 the deceived form, whether the, mimicked form be present or not ; (3) That a form, closely 

 resembling in appearance a rniruicking form, though occurring at a different tim ) of year, 

 or in a different locality, may protit to a greater or le3S degree by such resemblance, even 

 though both mimicked and mimicking forms are absent, provided, ho wave.*, the form pro 

 tected from has somewhere come in contact wich the di: tasteful form and learned by 

 experience that it is inedible ; (4) That we may and probably do have cases of partial 

 deception, and, therefore, partial protection ; (5) That cases of mimicry may occur where, 

 owing to the fact of the enemies having become exterminated, or the mimicked and 

 mimicking forms drifted into places inaccessible to such enemies, no protection is given 

 or required ; (6) That these problems are most far reaching, and we have as yet scarcely 

 begun to study them in their entirety, hence the fragment hove over among the rubbish 

 may yet prove to be the keystone of the archway through which we are to make our 

 way into one of the grandest and most suolime of nature's many temple3. 



THE SAN JOSE SOALE.* 



By F. M. Webster, Wooster, Ohio. 



My topic is not of my own cheosing, but the one assigned me by the Vice- 

 President and also by the Secretary of the American Association of Nurserymen. I 

 mention this fact, not in the way of compliment, but because so much has been said in 

 public print regarding this pest during the last year or two, that I may not be able to 

 present much that is new. About all that I shall attempt to do will be to bring 

 together all the facts in our possession and point out to this association, for its consider- 

 ation, some lessons that the past his taught us, and the possibility of profiting by such 

 lessons in the future. To me, though not a nurseryman but one whose business it is to 

 prot< ct some of their interests, the introduction of the San Jose^ scale into the country 

 lying to the east of the one hundredth meridian, and its suppression, so far as this has been 

 accompl.shed, has meant something more than the mere ,-tudy and investigation of the 

 pest ; more even than the overcoming of it and preventing its further diff i-uon. It has 

 appeared to me as though, in the last half of the last decide of the nineteenth century, 

 there had been presented to our people a test case, as it were, as well as a reminder that 

 the ccming twentieth century would bring to us problems which we had not 

 previou-ly been calbd upon to solve. The question that seemed to me to be involved 

 was this : Can a republican government, composed of nearly half a hundred minor 

 governments, protect its people from the ravages of a diminutive insect pest that has 

 been introduced among them to devastate their orchards and fruit farms ? What will be 

 done under such circumstance, and who will be the ones to do it ? This scale is a 

 serious pest, but is it not, be ides this, the straw that denotes the direction toward which 

 the wind is blowing 1 We have but to cast our eyes toward the State of Massachusetts 

 where a fierce battle is being carried on against another imported pest of our orchards 



* This valuable paper, re id at the Twentieth Annual M>etin? of the American Association of Nursery- 

 men, at Indianapolis. Lnd , June l^th and L3th, 1895, has been kindly furnished us by the writer, and will 

 be found well worthy of p c rusil in view uf the fact thit this insect may at any time be found in Ontario. 

 —Ed. 



