190 Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 
of kerosene and churning violently until a thick white cream is formed. 
Let this cool and jelly; it is the “stock,” and will hold for a few weeks; when 
ready to spray, dilute stock with twelve 
to fifteen times its own bulk of water 
and spray finely over the foliage. The 
spraying should be done when the 
young scales are hatching and crawl¬ 
ing about. They are then easily killed 
by contact' with even a single fine drop 
of kerosene. For peach-trees dilute 
the stock twenty times. 
Some of the scale-insects present 
such unusual conditions of structural 
modification and of habits that they 
are, when first met with, difficult to 
recognize as insects at all. The 
waxen covering may be so irregular and 
curiously shaped that it gives no clue to the character of the enclosed insect 
(Fig. 261), but seems to be simply a secretion of the plant in which the insects 
are found. Or the globular shape and absence of distinct body-parts may 
make the insects with their hardened blackish cuticle look like small plant- 
galls; indeed certain scale-insect species were first described by botanists as 
galls. Some scales live under ground, either in 
ants’ nests or independently; the curious so-called 
“ ground-pearls,” small spherical shining bodies 
found loosely scattered in the soil in certain tropic 
regions, and really collected to be strung on threads 
or necklaces, are the strangely modified bodies of 
Margarodes jormicarum, a scale-insect. Taken alto¬ 
gether, probably no other family of insects exceeds 
the Coccidae in the extremes of strange specializa¬ 
tions. 
Closely related to the plant - lice and scale- 
insects are the mealy-winged flies, constituting the 
family Aleyrodidae. The adults (Fig. 262), except 
of two or three of the most abundant species, are 
rarely seen even by professional entomologists, but 
careful search will reveal in almost any locality the 
curious little box-like elliptical bodies of the young 
(Fig. 263), usually shining black, with pure-white 
waxen rods, filaments, or tufts. Examined under a good magnifier, the 
wax-tufted cases are exquisite objects. These young mealy-wing flies look 
Fig. 259. —Female rose- 
scale, Diaspis r o see. 
(Photomicrograph b v 
George O. Mitchell; 
much enlarged.) 
Fig. 258. —Female red orange-scale, Aspi- 
diotus aurantii. (Photomicrograph by 
George O. Mitchell; much enlarged.) 
