57 



Mr. Howard described a scheme suggested by Mr. W. 0. Kerr for dis- 

 seminating oil over the marshy tracts to be treated # on Staten Island, 

 namely, by putting in barrels of oil in winter when the ground was 

 frozen and piercing the barrels with small holes so that the oil would 

 escape slowly throughout the breeding season. 



Mr. Howard presented the following paper: 



PULVINARIA ACERICOLA (W. & R.) AND P. INNUMERABILIS 



RATHV. 



By L. O. Howard, Washington, D. C. 



Every one interested in economic entomology and in the Coccidse 

 will remember the Walsh and Riley figure on page 14, Vol. I, American 

 Entomologist (fig. 3), which gives at b a drawing of Lecanium maclurce 

 n. sp., which represents a 

 Pulvinaria upon a branch 

 of Osage orange, and at a, 

 Lecanium acericola n. sp., 

 representing a Pulvinaria 

 upon a leaf of what is 

 apparently silver maple. 

 There is almost no de 

 scriptive matter concern- 

 ing the Lecanium aceri- 

 cola, but the figure is a 

 clear, sharp one, and, as 

 events have shown, it is 

 quite distinctive. The la- 

 mented J. Duncan Put- 

 nam, in his admirable 

 paper on Pulvinaria innu- 

 merabilis, published in 

 Vol. II, Proceedings of 



the Davenport Academy Fig. 3.— a, Pulvinaria acericola (W. and R.) on leaf of silver 

 rvP "NTa+ ol Q *n .oc in maple; b, Pulvinaria innumerabilis ; Eatliv. on twig of Osage 



01 natural Sciences, in orange _ natural size (redrawn from Walsh and Eiley). 



1879, considered Lecanium 



acericola to be a synonym of P. innumerabilis, while Lecanium maclurce 



he considered a possible synonym. 



Miss Emily A. Smith, in her paper entitled a The maple-tree bark- 

 louse," published in Vol. XII of the American Naturalist (1878), ques- 

 tions the accuracy of the Walsh and Eiley figure of the insects upon 

 the leaf of maple, but "the idea that the species is different from P. 

 innumerabilis, the common twig-inhabiting form throughout North- 

 eastern United States, does not seem to have occurred to her. Dr. 

 S. S. Rath von, however, who originally described P. innumerabilis in 

 1854, writing to Mr. Putnam about 1879, stated that he had all along 



