INSECTS OF THE ORANGE TREE. 11 
sap. He, however, thiuks not. I have already reported an ant as eat- 
ing holes in leaves and bark, but this supposed habit of the cetonian 
beetle is new to me. 
NeaPs mixture appears to be effective, applied with a scrubbing- 
brush to the trunks of trees infested with "bran-scale" (M. citricola). 
Of two trees examined September 3, one had been scrubbed several 
weeks before, and hardly any young scales could be found. The other 
tree adjoining it had not been scrubbed; the main trunk is sprinkled 
over with young seales, still white in color, and with very thin shells. 
They appear on the bark as a whitish powder or dust. This scale is 
apt to be found confined to the main trunk of large trees. It spreads 
upward from the ground, and quite slowly, i. e., taking several years to 
reach the branches. Many old trees have the upper portion of their 
trunks quite free from the scale, while near the ground the bark is 
thickly coated with them. 
September 5. — 1 visited some young groves 4 miles southwest of Crescent 
City. The 'trees were badly infested with rust mite, which I found on 
lemon and citron, but not on limes (the limes were killed to the roots 
.last winter). There were two bearing orange trees close to a house, 
but not more than the average distance (25 feet) from infested trees, 
which were entirely free from rust mite, on leaves and fruit, the latter 
not rusted in the slightest degree, and the foliage, by its glossy green, 
presenting a most remarkable contrast with that of the trees in the 
grove just over the fence. 
September 6. — Examined the tree upon which 1 found (August 27) 
the little black ant eating holes in leaves. I found the ants still at 
work, but, as the colony is a small one, no very great damage has been 
done. The tender shoot most attacked has ceased to grow. It has a few 
Aphis upon it, and these are attended by the ant. Some of the leaves 
eaten are so placed that no honey-dew could have fallen upon them 
from these Aphis, which are, moreover, but few in number and all young. 
There were, August 27, a very few scales of the Lecanium on the tree ; 
these are all dead. The ants are still gathered about the same holes 
they had begun when last examined, although the leaves are no longer 
tender and are now quite dry and partially dead (entirely dead where 
much eaten by the ants). The ants eat only from the under side, and 
devour all the parenchyma, sometimes leaving the upper epidermis and 
sometimes perforating the leaves. 
The little coral-red maggots, feeding upon " rust-mites," and described 
in my last letter, prove to be Oecidomyid flies. They are exceedingly 
difficult to raise, and most of them dry up iu confinement. Four of them, 
however, made little oval cocoons of white silk, after a week's confine- 
ment during which they fed but little and did not appeal to grow. Three 
of the Hies appeared in nine to ten days after making their cocoons. 
A young sour seedling orange plant, entirely covered with u long 
scale" {M. ghverii), and thoroughly covered with Neal's preparation on 
