Sangster, Mrs. Margaret Elizabeth Munson

Mrs. Margaret Elizabeth Munson (1838-), an American editor and poet. She was a native of New York state. At the age of twenty she married George Sangster. She soon began writing for various periodicals, and in 1871 became associate editor of Hearth and Home. She was successively editor of The Christian at Work, and of Harper's Bazaar, and in 1899 became a staff contributor to the Ladies' Home Journal. Her books include May Stanhope and her Friend, Little Knights and Ladies, Poems of the Household, Home Fairies, and Winsome Womanhood. Mrs. Sangster is best known for some of her short poems. Our Own, Are the Children Home? and Elizabeth, Aged Nine are favorites.

San Jose (ho-sa) Scale, an orchard insect pest. It is related to the mealy bugs and the nutgall insects. It is related, therefore, to the cochineal insect and to the oriental wax-producing insects. A close relative may be found on the twigs of the common white elm. There are many scale insects. The one in question is a native of China. It is supposed to have come to this country on nursery stock. It became a pest in the San Jose Valley of California. It infests the twigs and bark of the common orchard fruits, as the apple, cherry, peach, plum, and pear. It is troublesome also on gooseberry and currant bushes; on walnut, elm, oak, chestnut, and many other valuable trees and shrubs. An allied scale insect is a foe of the orange grower.

The life history of a scale insect is of interest. The young are small lice. They run about for a few hours or days feeding on tender green leaves. At this stage they may climb from tree to tree or be carried on the feet of birds and by flying insects. In a short time the young louse settles down, inserts its beak into the bark, sucks sap, and proceeds to grow. As the body increases the insect sheds the skin for a new one. The cast skins, together with wax excreted by the body, form a flat, papery scale or shield under which the insect continues to live. The male develops a pair of wings, loses its mouth parts, and comes out to fly about for a day or two before dying. The female grows, but never leaves the scale. It does not develop wings, but sheds all three pairs of legs and begins to lay eggs, shrinking as the process continues until but a shriveled dead skin remains.

The San Jose scale began to attract serious attention in 1906. Despite efforts to kill all eggs on nursery stock, the pest has spread (1909) to half of the United States, threatening the fruit industry with extinction. In 1908 it had been detected in Wisconsin and South Dakota.

Fruit growers are able to check the insect by spraying. For this purpose a mixture of lime, salt, and sulphur has been found effective. To make this mixture, fifteen pounds of sulphur are boiled with twenty pounds of stone lime and added to fifty gallons of water. A mixture of water, soap, and fish oil or kerosene is used for the same purpose. To be effective, it is necessary that the spray actually moisten the body of each insect. The work of spraying with lime water is about as agreeable as plastering a new house. Whitened, lime-eaten clothes and smarting eyes are unavoidable.

See Spraying; Paris Green; Bordeaux Mixture; Codlin Moth; Scale Insect; Gall; Louse, etc.