10 
~ N . C. Agricultural Experiment Station 
examine a badly infested twig we will find these little elevations closely 
crowded together so that they completely cover the surface of the bark 
(Fig. 1). 
Now, if we take a pin or the small blade of a knife, we will find that 
these small elevations can be lifted up and under some of them we will 
find a small yellow sack-like structure, the insect itself. If we touch the 
insect carefully we see that it is anchored to the bark by its beak. Un¬ 
der the insect we will find a circular whitish area of wax, the ventral 
scale. 
LIFE-HISTORY SUMMARY 
The gloomy scale, in common with all the other armored scales, has 
two entirely distinct life histories, one for the female and the other for 
the male. Individuals of both sexes start their development as minute 
six-legged insects, with a pair of eyes and a pair of antennae. These are 
called active young, and do not differ in the two sexes; but from this 
point the development in the two sexes is widely different. 
In the female the active young soon settles, inserts her beak into the 
bark and commences to suck the sap of the host tree. Slender thread¬ 
like waxy filament exude from the wax pores located over the body, and 
as these mat together, two plates of wax are formed, one covering the 
back of the tiny insect and the other between it and the bark of the tree 
on which it is feeding. The insect is soon covered in this way, and in 
a short time it molts, loosing its eyes, legs, and antennae. I hus the 
female becomes a sack-like animal with its beak inserted into the bark 
for sucking out the sap. It is not capable of locomotion, and from this 
stage onward the female is forced to remain in the same place. This 
development is taking place during the summer months. In the late 
summer the females are fertilized by males. They molt again and pass 
the winter as half-grown individuals. In the spring they grow rapidly 
for a short period and early in May they commence to give birth to 
living young, which start another cycle. This process is kept up during 
the whole summer. The mature females diminish gradually during the 
summer, the last ones dying in late August. 
The males start from active young like the females and form their 
scale coverings and molt in the same way, but after the first molt they 
are more elongate than the females and the scale covering is oval in out¬ 
line, not circular as in the female. The male at this stage is an elongate 
sack-like insect, feeding on the sap through the long, slender beak. 
About the middle of August the males change remarkably. They loose 
their mouth parts and cease feeding. Three pairs of legs, a pair of 
antennae, and a pair of wings develop as sack-like outgrowths of the 
body. At first these appendages are poorly formed, and this stage is 
