1888;] 227 



quantities on the branches o£ currant bushes, and, I am informed, 

 sometimes plays havoc even to the destruction of the bushes. Another 

 Coccid, Mi/tilaspis po77iorum,3ouch.e, often abounds on the stems of 

 apple and other fruit trees, especially if from any cause the tree be 

 sickly, to that extent that the tree dies. Although the scales are 

 comparatively small, and the inhabitants are kept in check by parasitic 

 Hymenoptera and Acari, thex'e is yet room for the aid of Lepidopterous 

 or other beneficent agents, though it may be doubted if the owners 

 of the trees would recognise them in this capacity. 



There are other and previous records of the destruction of 

 Coccids by Lepidopterous larvae. In the " Report of the Entomologist 

 of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1879," by Pro- 

 fessor J. H. Comstock, several such coccophagous larvse are enumerated; 

 the descriptions of them and the resulting moths are too long to give 

 in this resume, but I cite the salient points of the economy of the 

 respective species. 



DaJcruma coccidivora, Comst. (Fam. Pyralidce) . 



In a colony of scales of Pulvinaria innumerahilis, Katliron,* was found a larva 

 of this Pyralid, living within the cottony mass excreted by one of the Coccids. Other 

 scales were found to be similarly tenanted, and the eggs that had been laid, or the 

 young Coccids that had been developed from them, had been destroyed. Although 

 the larva is well protected, living as it does within the mass of cottony excretion, it 

 spins about its body a delicate silken tube. When a branch is thickly infested by 

 the Pulvinaria, these tubes extend from one shell to another ; the caterpillars 

 moving freely about within these silken passages. The cocoon is made within the 

 tubes, the pupa being plainly visible through the texture. The moth emerges 

 within a month or six weeks. More than forty moths were bred, and there was no 

 indicp^tion of the larvse having fed on the tree on which the scales were found, nor 

 any evidence that they had eaten any of the excretory masses in which they live. 

 These predaceous larvse were so numerous that it was difficult to find a scale not 

 infested by them, and the efficiency of the check to the spread of the Pulvinaria is 

 seen in the fact that the scales have not as yet become commonly distributed in 

 Washington. The same moth was also bred from other Coccids received from 

 Florida, — a Lecaniv.m, a Dactylopius, and Lecanium hesperidum, showing that it is 

 widely distributed and always predaceous. 



DaJcruma pallida, Comst. 



The larvse of this species were found living within a spherical gall-like Kernies, 

 on oak near Sanford, Pla., and other specimens were found feeding on the eggs of 

 another species of Kermes at Fort George, Fla. When full-fed, the larva leaves the 

 Coccid and makes a cocoon, which is attached to the outside of the Coccid, or to a 

 neighbouring twig. 



* Figured in Comstock's " Report " for 1880, pi. 11, fig. 6. The species is probably synony- 

 mous with the P. vitis, Linn., of Kurope ; in America it lives on maple, negundo, grape, Osage 

 orange, and other plants, often in such numbers as to be a pest.- J. W. D. 



