43 



varieties. Her enormoits population of 46,000,000 has compelled the 

 growth of cereals and other necessities of life wherever possible, and 

 among these necessities tea and mulberries must be included, but 

 these are grown as hedge plants, or where rice can not be grown very 

 often. 



A people too poor to enjoy more than the most meager living, the 

 Japanese have not indulged verj^ much in such luxuries as fruits. 



Their love of the beautiful, manifested in a thousand waj^s, finds 

 its most common exemplification in the presence everywhere of fiower- 

 ing trees (cherries, plums, etc.) where fruit trees might be grown, and 

 the conditions briefly described have been characteristic of the coun- 

 try for two thousand years — her agriculture being scarcel}^ altered 

 from the time of Alexander. 



The distinctivel}^ native Diaspine scale of Japan is the Diaspis pen- 

 tagona already referred to. It is what we know in America as the 

 white peach scale, and which in Italy is the enemy of the mulberry. 

 In Japan this scale is found on the flowering cherr}^ and plum, grown 

 in every dooryard, in all the jjarks and temple yards, along roadways- 

 and along the little strij)s of soil dividing one rice patch from another, 

 and is almost worshiped in the season of bloom. These trees, cherished 

 as nowhere else in the world, attain a great age, and when xDrotected 

 by drjaiess or almost immovable supports, inclosed with fences and 

 marked and labeled with imposing stone monuments, become to the 

 entomologist valuable records of insect work or the absence of it, of 

 one or two hundred years' standing. The peach — a rough-barked 

 scraggy tree in Japan — it infests as a rule but slightly. The mulberry 

 is often badly attacked, as are also other plants, and notably the Kaido 

 a green-barked ornamental tree very common h^ grown. 



The reason for believing this scale insect to be undoubtedly native or 

 introduced so long ago as to i:)ractically amount to this is that it occurs 

 everywhere, not only on the main islands, but on the little islands 

 also; and, furthermore, in every doorj^ard and on absolutely every 

 cherry and plum tree within the limits of the Japanese Empire. Such 

 universal and invariable occurrence I have never witnessed anywhere 

 else, nor in the case of au}^ other scale insect. 



Very rarely does it occur more than scatteringly, so that great 

 damage is not often suffered. Chalcidid parasitism does not play so 

 important a role in keeping it thus in check. The chief agent in this 

 din ction is a little twice-stabbed ladybird, which I identify from the 

 named collection at the hands of Mr. Nawa, at Gifu, as Chilocorus 

 similis Rossi. This little beetle, looking almost exactly like our C. 

 hivulnerus, though possibly smaller, is everj^where with the Diaspis, 

 feeding as larva or adult on it, and keeping it from often developing 

 in large numbers. 



The San Jose scale, on the other hand, presents a ver}^ different 

 picture, and is undoubtedly of comparatively recent origin in Japan. 



While occurring rarel}^ on man}^ plants, it is economically limited 



