10 THE SAN JOSE SCALE. 
deciduous plants, might be easily ignored or thought insignificant, is 
soon startlingly demonstrated. Its importance, from an economic 
standpoint, is vastly increased by the ease with which it is distributed 
over wide districts through the agency of nursery stock and the mar- 
keting of fruit, and the extreme difficulty of exterminating it where 
once introduced-, presenting, as it does in the last regard, difficulties 
not found witli any other scale insect. Its importance was early recog- 
nized by Professor Comstock, who in first describing it in 1880 gave it 
the suggestive name of perniciosus, saying of it that it is the most 
pernicious scale insect known in this country. The Los Angeles Hor- 
ticultural Commission reported in 1890 that if this pest be not speedily 
destroyed it will utterly ruin the deciduous fruit interests of the Pacific 
Coast. Its capacity for evil has been more than demonstrated since its 
appearance in the East, and it has been, if anything, more disastrous 
to the peach aud pear orchards of Maryland, New Jersey, and other 
Eastern and Southern States than in California and the West. 
We are therefore justified in the assertion that no more serious men- 
ace to the deciduous fruit interests of this country has ever been known. 
There is no intention here to arouse unnecessary alarm, but merely to 
emphasize the importance of taking the utmost precautions to pre- 
vent its introduction into new localities, and to point out the extreme 
necessity of earnest effort to stamp it out where it has already gained 
a foothold. 
HISTORY AND PRESENT STATUS. 
ORIGINAL HOME AND OCCURRENCES IN OTHER COUNTRIES. 
Outside of the United States the insect is known to occur in Australia, 
Chile, and Hawaii. The inference is therefore a natural one that 
this insect was introduced into the United States from one of these 
three countries, or at least from some point in or across the Pacific. 
In the earlier publications on the subject it was accepted, on what 
seemed to be trustworthy authority, that it first reached California on 
trees imported from Chile by the late James Lick in 1870. This infor- 
mation was derived from a paper read by Mr. Alexander Craw before 
one of the California horticultural conventions, and Mr. Craw gave as 
his authority Mr. John Brittou. From later correspondence with Mr. 
Britton it is learned that the sole bases for this supposition are(l) that 
the scale first became epidemic in the orchard of the late Mr. Lick, 
aud first spread to those orchards which had communication with his 
orchard; and (2) that Mr. Lick was an energetic importer of trees and 
shrubs, and had resided m Chile for a long period before coming to Cali- 
fornia. Mr. Britton states that Mr. Lick imported trees and shrubs 
from other localities, and that there is no further basis for the Chilian 
supposition than the above. 
Effort has been made to ascertain whether the insect is known in 
Chile, and at different times naturalists residing in that country have 
