June, ’24] 
SCIENTIFIC NOTES 
417 
not be safe to assume that all cheeses in a given room were protected by an unbroken 
coating of paraffin, and in view of the very evident tendency of cheese to retain this 
poisonous acid and the fact that cheese is not usually cooked before being eaten, (a 
process which would be expected to aid the volatilization of the retained acid), the 
writer feels that until more extensive tests are made to prove otherwise, in regard to 
each variety of cheese, cyanide fumigation of cheese should not be recommended. 
Perez Simmons, Entomologist , Stored Product Insect Investigations, 
Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Dept. Agr. 
Calcium Cyanide Dust for Rosy Apple Aphis. On June 21, 1923 eight and one- 
half Gravenstein and two Baldwin apple trees, twenty-five years old, were dusted 
between two and four P. M. with Calcium Cyanide dust (twenty-five percent calcium 
cyanide, seventy-five percent talc) for the control of Aphis sorhi. The total amount 
of dust used was twenty-five pounds, an average of about three pounds per tree.The 
tests were conducted in the A. J. Schaefer orchards situated in Ulster County near 
Plattekill, N. Y. The applications were made with a Dosch hand duster. 
Weather conditions were almost ideal for dusting; there had been no rain for sev¬ 
eral days preceding or subsequent to the application; temperature at the time of the 
applications was 92° F.; relative humidity 85%; southwest winds of about three 
miles per hour prevailed. 
The undersides of the leaves on all of the trees were heavily infested with both 
winged and wingless forms of Aphis sorhi. After each application, the trees were 
shaken to dislodge the insects. The following forms were caught on sheets under 
the trees: Aphis sorhi, ants, bees, rose leaf beetles. The average quantity of insects 
caught on one sheet measuring seven feet by three feet was upward of three cubic 
inches of insects. 
The first examinations were made about five minutes after each application—at 
the time the trees were shaken. The next examinations w r ere made about ten hours 
later. While a small percentage of the total catch still seemed to be alive at the time 
of the first examination, there w r as apparently no survival at the time of the second 
examination. 
Later examinations of the trees during the season revealed no injury to either 
fruit or foliage as a result of the applications. At the time of the tests, the average 
size of the fruit was about one inch in diameter. Some of the infested leaves had 
already curled. 
C. C. Wagoner, Highland, N. Y. 
Note on the Squash Beetle {Epilachna borealis Fab.). Under the caption “Squash 
Pest,’’ Mr. Wyatt W. Jones, writing in the Journal of Economic Entomology of 
February, 1924 (Vol. 17, page 176), calls attention to the occurrence of this species 
at Douglas, Arizona, attacking all kinds of cucurbits, including Apondanthera 
undulata. The writer received two specimens from Mr. Jones which correspond very 
closely to what Gorham 1 considers typical borealis, the only observable difference 
being that in the case of Air. Jones’ sending, in one specimen the elytral black dots are 
a little smaller and the prothorax is unspotted. In a series of a similar lot with spots 
a little larger, received from Mr. E. G. Smyth and collected at Guatemala City, 
Guatemala, in 1923, in one example the median thoracic spot is present and the others 
’Biologia Centrali-Americana, Coleoptera, Vol. 7, p. 241, PI. 13, Fig. 12. 
