752 General Notes. 
cases the description is based upon a single specimen; in the fifth 
upon but three. The species are from Utah, Colorado, and Nevada 
county, California. Although the descriptions appear to be very 
carefully written, and doubtless are excellent ones if it is possible 
to prepare good descriptions of species from unique examples, 
still, what is the occasion for publishing these descriptions here? 
Is it not about time that the serious workers in entomology should 
abandon the practice of publishing isolated descriptions except 
where there is a necessity for the description ; as, for examples, in 
articles describing the life-habits of the species in question? We 
can see the reason for the description of Lestophomus iceryed, a 
parasite of cottony cushion scale which has been artificially intro- 
duced into California from Australia. 3 : 
In form Insect Life has the appearance of the bulletins which 
have been sent out by the Division of Entomology, the size of the 
page and the type being the same. It is to be published on an 
average once a month, but will not have the regularity of a regular 
monthly. 
PREVENTION OF CuRCULIO INJURY TO CHERRIES BY AR- 
SENICAL Porsons.—During the last two years we have heard it 
repeatedly asserted by fruit growers that curculio injury can be 
largely prevented by spraying the trees with Paris green or London 
purple. At first we were incredulous ; but the statement has been 
made so positively that we have said in reply to inquiries that 1t 
might be so but that we could not say in what way the poison 
acted, as the eggs of the curculio are laid beneath the surface of the 
fruit and out of the way of anything which might be sprayed upon 
the tree. We are glad to see that Mr. Clarence M. Weed has 
begun his work as Entomologist to the Ohio Agriculture Experi- 
ment Station by conducting careful experiments on this subject. 
The results are very striking. They seem to show so far as the 
results of a single season’s work with a single variety of cherries 
can be relied upon: “ That three-fourths of the cherries liable to my 
by the plum Curculio can be saved by two or three lo o 
London purple in a water spray(in the proportion of one ounce to HV? 
gallons of water) made soon after the blossoms fall.” 
wo quarts of cherries from each of the lots experimented on wet 
chemically examined at the time of ripening by Professor H. 
Weber and showed no trace of arsenic. + hia 
No explanation is made by Mr. Weed as to the way m W re 
the poison acts. Whether the adult beetles are destroyed be ni 
they lay their eggs or whether the poison reaches the young larvæ. 
