8 
N. C. Agricultural Experiment Station 
eign countries of several very destructive pests, the opinion has become 
rather prevalent that all destructive pests are introduced from abroad. 
The writer, however, believes that the gloomy scale is a native species. 
His reasons for believing this are based on the following facts: (1) The 
gloomy scale is found frequently in woods far removed from towns or 
cities where infestation is general; (2) the gloomy scale has never been 
reported from any other country than tlye United States, so far as the 
writer is aware. While neither one of these facts is conclusive, they 
both point the same way. The finding of this pest on native ma/ples 
growing wild, both in the foothills of the mountains and in the swamps 
in the eastern part of the State, frequently several miles from human 
habitation, would be hard to explain on any other basis. The further 
fact that scale insects have been rather generally studied in all parts of 
the world and the gloomy scale has not, so far as a careful search of the 
record shows, been reported from other countries, can lead to but the one 
conclusion—that this is a native pest. 
HOST PLANTS 
The gloomy scale attacks a long list of trees, as is shown by the fol¬ 
lowing list, but it is chiefly an enemy of the soft maples, red maples 
(Acer rub rum), and silver maple (Acer saccharinum ). The other trees 
Fig. 4. Showing the resistance of the hard maples to the attacks of gloomy scale. 
The trees on either side are hard maples ; the trees in the center are soft maples. 
in the list are usually attacked only when they are placed close to soft 
maples so that they could hardly escape. Hard maples, such as the 
sugar maple (Acer saccharum ), and the Norway maple (Acer plata- 
noides), are very resistant (Fig. 4), even when placed in direct contact 
with dead or dying soft maples. 
