"GOLDEN BLIGHT."

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17471, 3 June 1922, Page 14

"GOLDEN BLIGHT."

SUGGESTIONS TOE ITS DESTRUCTION. Information regarding "golden blight," and its attacks on oak trees, has been Bent to the Christchurch Domains Board by Mr G. Britten, a former resident of Canterbury, who now lives at Kiwaka, Nelson. Mr Britten, who has made a special study of scale insects, stated that he thought the so-called 'golden blight" was the well-known oak scale Asterolecanium variolosum, which appeared to be exclusively confined to the oak. in the Nelson district it was very common, and he had yet to find the oak that was not more or less thickly covered with the scale. He had examined thousands of coccids, but he hud never found one parasitised nor had he heard of its being so. Nemstead stated, however, that it was freely eaten by both the blue titmouse and the long titmouse'. Whether any of the New Zealand buds devoured the scale he could not say, but probably Mr E. F. Stead would -undertake to find out. In his opinion, the white-eye waxeve, o r blightbird, was the most likely to do eo. As to whether or not the black ladybird (Rhizobiua ventralis), which lived on the bluegum scale would also devour the oak scale he could not tell. That could be decided by observing oak trees in the neighbourhood of bluegums at JBolleston.