66 Bulletin of Wisconsin Natural History Society. Vol. 1, No. 1. 
appearance in late May and early June of this year^ despite the 
severely cold weather of the past winter, in such unusually large 
numbers on our shade and ornamental trees, as to cause serious 
apprehension among property holders. 
At about the same time it also appeared in destructive numbers 
in Chicago, Evanston, Lake Forest, Waukegan and nearly all of 
the lake shore towns between Milwaukee and Chicago. 
In and about the City of Alilwaukee are many small nurseries 
from which large numbers of young maples are annually sold and 
shipped to the neighboring villages and towns and there again 
transplanted. 
Several such nurseries examined this fall have the small limbs 
quite covered with the minute and inconspicuous brown over- 
wintering scales. This may in some measure account for their 
unusually large numbers and wide distribution during the past 
year in this territory. As usual the soft maples suftered most 
severely from this attack, but many specimens w^ere also observed 
on hard maple, box elder and ash, while others were taken on elm 
trees, the grape vine and currant bushes. The limbs of some 
small maples on Chestnut Street, between Thirteenth and Four- 
teenth streets, were so badly infested as to give them the appear- 
ance of having been sprinkled with whitewash. One such small 
limb showed forty-one of these destructive egg-laden insects re- 
posing on its surface, within a compass of six inches. 
When noticed these trees had already lost much of their foliage 
and later observations proved that several of them had been killed 
outright. 
As a general thing, however, these attacks only weakened the 
vitality of the trees, making way for tree diseases and the ravages 
of the Tussock moth caterpillar, Orgyia lencostigma Sni. and 
Abb., and like insects, which followed soon after. 
A thorough canvass of the city by the entomological members 
of the society, showed the most badly-infested portion to be a dis- 
trict on the West Side, bounded by Tenth Street on the east, 
Twentieth Street on the west, Grand Avenue on the south and 
Chestnut Street on the north, a tract ten by five blocks square. 
Thousands of the young scales appeared upon the leaves in 
early August, but at least 50 per cent, of these had the appearance 
of being badly parasitized. 
By early October the most of the healthy scales had transferred 
themselves to the limbs where they now repose in considerable 
numbers. We have counted as many as 200 upon a single small 
branch, fifteen inches long and less than one-eighth inch in diam- 
