Scale Bugs
WHAT, May, you are tired out?
What have you been doing?
Oh, yes, washing the scales off the leaves of your mother's window fern.
It must indeed have been a task; what did you wash them off with ?
Why did you use soap suds?
Because your mother told you to; well, that is a good reason, but why do you think she told you to use soap suds?
You say you don't know, but you think very likely these scales are some sort of bug, as everything nowadays seems to be bugs. Well, I don't know about everything being bugs, but those scales certainly are. They are scale bugs. Did you stop to look at them under the magnifying glass ?
No, but you brought a piece of the fern for us to look at.
It will be necessary to put it under the microscope.
There, now look.
Yes, that scale looks like a tiny mussel shell; but look carefully, and you will see it has legs.
Lift it up with the point of a pin, and under it you will find a mass of eggs. Yes, Ned; it is like a quantity of eggs under a dish cover. The cover is the female scale bug, and she has laid all those eggs.
Yes, the scales we see on so many plants are the scale bugs.
They are not all alike in shape, or size, or color; here is a different kind, you see.
But they are all very prolific; that is to say, they produce a great many young, and do it in a short time.
