54 Journal of the Mitchell Society [ June 
which time it had gained a strong foothold. In 1897 it was 
known in six or eight localities, In 1900 it was known in about 
twenty places. In August 1904, it was known in 44 counties. 
At present (April 1908) it is known to be on no less than 423 
different premises, at 145 different post offices (or rural routes 
therefrom), in 65 counties. Further details of its present known 
distribution in this state will be discussed later. 
Trees that are very badly infested with the San Jose Scale look 
as if they had been dusted over with ashes. Examined with a 
lens this scurfy crust on the branches is found to be made up of 
hundreds of little nipple-like objects or scales, lying close to the 
bark. The largest scales are those of the mature females and are 
gray in color, circular, about the size of the head of a good-sized 
pin but with a slightly greater degree of convexity than the sur- 
face of the top of the pin-head. Slightly to one side of the cen- 
ter of the scale is a lemon-yellow nipple or “center”. Turning 
over this scale with a pin or knife-point we may find the bright 
yellow, soft-bodied, wingless, eyeless, legless body of the female 
insect beneath. Indeed, her energies seem concentrated on the 
two all-important biological functions of assimilating food and 
reproduction . The food is procured by means of a slender thread- 
like organ thrust into the bark and through which the sap of the 
tree is imbibed. 
The young are born alive, there being no distinct egg-stage in 
the life-history of the species, and the young are able to creep out 
from under the parent scale. For a few hours these yellowish 
young lice, barely visible to the naked eye, are able to creep 
about freely, but when they are compelled by hunger to thrust 
their beaks into the bark to draw nourishment they become per- 
manently attached, and after a few hours more the scale begins to 
form, being composed of a waxy secretion from the body, com- 
bined with the cast skins of the growing young insect. 
There are a number of complete and distinct generations of the 
insect in the course of the season, but when settled cold winter 
weather comes the old insects nearly always die, leaving only the 
partly -grown ones to survive. These over- wintering scales are 
almost black and about as large as the cross-section of the body of 
