7i6 



Orchard and Bush Fruit Pests. 



[march, 



and prevents the egg shell from rupturing. As no damage was 

 done in the plantation and as no eggs of the Psylla can be 

 found on the limed trees this winter, whilst they swarm on 

 the rows not washed, this will probably prove to be the solution 

 of the difficulty. A fuller report on the general effects of 

 complete lime washing will be issued this spring. 



Z^?^/-i76'//rrj-.— Leaf-hoppers {Typhlocyhidae) belonging to 

 three species, namely, Chloritct flavescens, Fabricius, Oilorita 

 viridula, Fallen, and TypJilocyba guerca, Fallen, were abnormally 

 abundant in 1906 in parts of Kent, Devon, and Worcestershire. 



No previous records are known of these insects doing damage 

 in this country to fruit trees, but several growers have informed 

 me that they have on previous occasions been very annoying, 

 and that they check the growth of the trees. 



The effect of these leaf-hoppers in 1906 was to produce a 

 silvery grey or marbled appearance of the leaves of plums 

 and apples, due to their constant sucking away of the sap froni 

 below the leaves. So great was this attack in some orchards that 

 certain trees looked at a distance as if they were suffering from 

 " silver-leaf" One grower in Kent reported that the " hoppers " 

 were in such swarms that the pickers had to stop work owing to 

 the insects getting into their eyes, nose, mouth and ears. 



A good washing with soft soap and quassia, or paraffin 

 wash, was found to destroy them in the nymphal stages, but the 

 only wa\' to destroy the v.'inged hoppers is to knock them off 

 the trees with soft soap wash and then spray them with a 

 25 per cent, paraffin emulsion when on the ground. From 

 several localities the yellow leaf-hoppers iChloiHtd) were found 

 to be largely parasitized by Proctotrupids^ and also a few of the 

 spotted leaf-hopper {Typhlocyba quena, Fal.) were similarly 

 affected. 



Brown Currant and Gooseberry Seale. — From Herefordshire, 

 Kent, and W^orcestershire, complaints reached me of the brown 

 currant scale {Lecaninin coryli), in all instances on gooseberries. 

 This pest has been further reported as being readily checked 

 by winter spraying with caustic alkali wash. 



White Woolly Cnrrant Scale. — The white woolly currant scale 

 {Pnlvlnaria vitis, var. ribis) also occurred again in Huntingdon- 

 shire, near St. Neots, and was also reported from near Worcester. 



