SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



151 



SCALE INSECTS. 



By T. D. A. Cockekell, Entomologist, New Mexico Agricultural Station. 



'HPHE extensive damage done to cultivated plants 

 by Coccidse, or scale insects, in various parts 

 of the world is now so well-known, even outside of 

 the professions of horti- 

 culture and entomology, 

 which it most intimately 

 concerns, as to show the 

 importance of adding 

 to our knowledge of 

 their distribution. How- 

 ever, notwithstanding 

 the economic import- 

 ance of the group, it 

 is comparatively little 

 studied, and from many 

 parts of the world no 

 species whatever are 

 known, although they 

 must certainly exist in 

 abundance. For ex- 

 ample, we know many 

 more species from the 

 single island of Jamaica, 

 where the present writer 

 collected them, than 

 from the whole con- 

 tinent of Africa. In 

 addition to this, the 

 several faunae are be- 

 coming every day more 

 mixed, to the perplexity 

 of the naturalist and 

 the distress to the hor- 

 ticulturist. Thus I pub- 

 lished from Jamaica, in 

 1892, a presumed new 

 species, found on Cap- 

 sicum, as Diaspis lanatus. 

 It has just transpired 

 that it is not specifically 

 distinct from Diaspis 

 amygdali, Tryon, which 

 was described, in 1889, 

 on peach in Australia. 

 Moreover, since that 

 date the same species 

 has been found as a 

 serious peach pest, in 

 the eastern United States 

 of America, and I have 

 seen it from California (on dwarf peach from 

 Japan, in Japanese nursery at San Jose, coll. 

 Ehrhorn), Japan (coll. Takahashi, com. U.S. Dep. 

 Agric), and Ceylon (coll. E. E. Green). Thus 



Abnormal Ox-eye Daisy (see p. 150.) 



a seriously] injurious species, totally unknown to 

 science until 1889, is now recognised in the I'alae 

 arctic, Oriental, Australian, Nearctic and Neo- 

 tropical regions. 



Nothing was known 

 of the Japanese species 

 of Coccidae until very 

 lately, and even now 

 the published records 

 are extremely few. But 

 the U.S. Department of 

 Agriculture, recognising 

 the danger from un- 

 known Japanese species 

 which might be intro- 

 duced on fruit trees, 

 has made an effort to 

 obtain some informa- 

 tion. Mr. Takahashi 

 was employed to collect 

 in Japan for the De- 

 partment, and I have 

 been permitted to des- 

 cribe nine new species 

 in the collections he 

 made. Even now, be- 

 fore these descriptions 

 are published, Mr. 

 Ehrhorn sends me one 

 of those described, 

 Aspidwtus duplex, as in- 

 festing camellias in a 

 Japanese nursery at San 

 Francisco, California. 



Last year Dr. Del 

 Guercio described a 

 new species, Aspidiotus 

 piricola, from Italy. Mr. 

 Ehrhorn sends me a 

 species of plum from 

 San Jose, California, 

 which I cannot by any 

 means separate from it. 

 Also, last year, Mr. 

 Newstead described the 

 new Lecanium perforatum 

 from the Palm House 

 at Kew, native country 

 unknown. Already I 

 have received it from 

 hothouse palms in Denver, Colorado (Gillette, 

 coll.), and San Francisco, California (Ehrhorn). 



The year before last Mr. Maskell described 

 Dactylopius nipu-, from Demerara. Last year I 



