A I^KW ORCHARD PLANT LICK 7 
* 
The body beneath the wool is of a rusty or purplish brown 
color in the fully grown lice, but the very young are much lighter 
colored. The winged lice are recognized in patches of the white 
secretion by their long, dusky wings. The thorax and head are 
black, or nearly so; the abdomen is a dark yellowish brown, and 
the legs, eyes and antennae are also black or blackish. The last 
lice in the fall, those that live over on the tree above ground 
(Fig. ii), are of a dark yellowish to dusky brown color, without 
tlie cottony secretion, and would not be recognized as the same 
insect at all by one not familiar with this stage in the life his¬ 
tory of this insect. 
LIKK history. 
The life history of this pest of our apple orchards is most 
Avonderful, some stages of which are still not well worked out. 
Upon the roots, the wingless lice may be found in all stages of 
development at any time of the year, reproduction and growth tak¬ 
ing place more slowly or ceasing entirely in cold weather. Ap¬ 
parently the weather is never cold enough to kill the lice that are 
v/ell beneath the surface of the ground. We have occasionally 
found winged lice beneath the surface of the ground when digging 
about the roots of trees, but we have never found the true males 
or females or eggs upon the roots. So the lice are always carried 
through the winter in large numbers upon the roots of the trees, 
and many of the small lice have often been seen in the spring and 
early summer migrating up the trunks of apple trees, some of 
which, undoubtedly, lived over winter upon the roots, or are the 
offspring of those that did. This does not mean that there is any¬ 
thing like a general migration of the root-lice upward in the spring, 
for we have no reason to think that such is the case. Neither do 
lice that are half-grown or more seem inclined to change their lo¬ 
cations. Only the very young seem to travel about.* 
Upon the trunks and branches of the trees we have, then, 
four possible sources of the lice in the spring; the little brown 
lice that descended mostly to the crowns of the trees in the fall to 
impend the winter; lice from the roots, whose ancestors lived upon 
the roots the previous summer; young lice of the last fall brood 
that Avere able to withstand the rigors of the winter upon the trunk 
and branches, and lice hatching from eggs that Avere deposited the 
previous fall by the sexual females. 
From or;r observations, the most important of these sources 
is the first mentioned, and the least, if of any importance at all. 
*Since writing' the above, a letter from Mr. George P. Weldion, Fiield 
Entomologist, located at Delta, Colo., dated June 25, ’08, says; “I notice 
only very small lice are trapped in Tanglefoot Lands, indicating that the 
larger ones do not migrate at all.” 
