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sometimes six feet high. It is rounded like a tumble-weed. When it 

 comes to maturity the winds break it off and blow it along and scatter 

 the seed as it is blown. It is an annual. Nothing can be done with it 

 until it appears in the spring, and then it must be dug up, and the 

 digging must be followed up during the growing season. It is no slight 

 task to eradicate it, because it must be watched all the year through. 

 The flower is very small. Perhaps the most noticeable thing about it is 

 its seed pods, which are cup-shaped, and quite peculiar for a weed of 

 that character. 



The Chairman: I would like to ask of Mr. Craw if he has any new 

 pest to report, as having come into the State during the past year. 



Mr. Craw: In the past year we have found a pest which threatened 

 to be a very serious one. It has been noticed particularly on peach 

 and plum trees coming from Japan. It is a small white scale, the 

 Diaspis lanatus. It has been found in Washington on some seedling 

 peach trees. Experiments have proved that it is most difficult to 

 destroy. Coal-oil emulsion, and lime, salt, and sulphur have been 

 found ineffective. Not more than from 5 to 10 per cent have been 

 destroyed by such experiments. It exists on nearly all kinds of plants, 

 not only deciduous, but nearly every other kind of plant. It is found 

 in the West Indies on ornamental plants, and experiments there have 

 met with a similar failure. In our experiments here we find it suc- 

 cumbs to cyanide of potassium and sulphuric acid as a gas. A great 

 many trees that arrived with it have been destroyed. But there were 

 prior arrivals when we did not know of its very serious character, and 

 they were fumigated and released. Those trees we will have to keep 

 track of and see that the scale does not spread. There was one Florida 

 planter who received quite a number of trees from a California nursery, 

 and the following year they were covered with this scale. He was 

 under the impression that he had received the scale from California on 

 the trees, but afterwards he found the scale eighty miles from where 

 first discovered, in a section where they had received no trees from Cali- 

 fornia. So far as I know, there is no nursery in the State where it has 

 been found. I am satisfied that it was introduced there from Jamaica, 

 or from some of those nurseries in the South. There is one nursery in 

 Georgia where the trees were found to be infested. I would caution all 

 the fruit growers of the State to look out for it. I am not aware of its 

 appearance in any of the orchards of the State, however. 



Mr. Lelong: Will you tell the convention what experience you have 

 had with the pear aphis? 



Mr. Craw: The pear aphis is something new. There is a case 

 reported from Yolo County where the pears are suffering. A gentleman 

 who is the superintendent of an extensive orchard, after an examina- 

 tion, reported it as the woolly aphis, to the State Board. On examination 

 of the roots I found it differed somewhat from the woolly aphis, and 

 it appeared to be a very serious pest, because it destroys the small fibers 

 and gets in under the larger roots in such a manner that it appears to 

 poison, them. Experiments were conducted by Mr. Zane, the gentleman 

 I referred to, with gas lime, and also with rosin solution poured around the 

 trees, but neither was particularly effective. One large orchard of Bart- 

 lett pears, eight years old, was almost ruined last season by the aphis. 

 I found it about two years ago on imported stock, and I communicated 

 with all the quarantine guardians in the State and instructed them to 



