BUG VS. BUG. 



+3 



study. Only upon rare occasions have we taken more than a half-dozen specimens 

 from a single tube. This experience has been repeated year after year until the fall 

 of 1899. * * * Last fall, however, I discovered a new locality for Aphelinus 

 fuscipennis, near Easton, Talbot County, in an infested orchard along the Miles 

 River. The orchard contained a miscellaneous variety of fruits, and all the trees 

 were quite seriously infested with the San Jose scale. Instructions have been given 

 the owner to cut them down as soon as possible and burn them. A quantity of small 

 branches infested with scale were brought to the laboratory and inclosed in breeding 

 tubes. Much to my surprise, these tubes were swarming with parasites a few days 

 later. From one tube 3,114 specimens of Aphelinus fuscipennia were taken, while 

 a second tube gave 432, a third 1,478, and a fourth more than 1,000, but owing to 

 an accident the count in the case last mentioned was not exact. 



The California method of fighting insect pests is to use the most 

 efficient artificial means while we have to, and to this end we apply all 

 sorts of known washes, dips, and fumigation, but, while so doing, we 

 realize that these measures are very cumbersome, costly and inefficient, 

 and that nature has provided a better way, and it is of this way that we 

 avail ourselves. We endeavor to trace back the course traveled over by 

 our destructive pests, to trail them to their native lair, and there we 

 will find their check. This check, whether it be a parasitic or a preda- 

 ceous insect, or both, as sometimes found, we secure, introduce, and 

 breed, with the greatest care, in our insectary, where it becomes accli- 

 mated in its new home, and as it propagates it is sent into those sections 

 where the pest upon which it is to prey is most prevalent. This method 

 has been found so effective that we have now very few really trouble- 

 some orchard pests, the worst at the present time being the codling- 

 moth, and for this we hope to find a natural check, and are now working 

 toward that end. 



It must not be supposed from this that there are no insect pests in 

 California. We have been importing these pests from all parts of the 

 world for half a century past and have had representatives from all 

 parts of the world, and have them still, for when an insect once obtains a 

 foothold, its eradication is practically impossible, but by introducing its 

 natural enemy, we offset one against the other, and give ourselves no 

 further uneasiness as to the outcome. The pests may do some damage, 

 they may break out in sections in unusual numbers for a time, but 

 invariably they are reduced below the line of serious damage shortly 

 by the natural means, and it is done more effectively and permanently 

 than can be done by any artificial method. 



In an address before the fourteenth annual meeting of the Association 

 of Economic Entomologists, Prof. C. L. Marlatt gave an account of a trip 

 he had made to Japan and China in search of the native home of the 

 San Jose scale, and in speaking of its discovery there he alluded to para- 

 sites which he found working upon it, and which are the same species 

 which have done such good work on this pest in California. He said : 



The apple industry of Japan is of recent origin, say within the last thirty years; 

 most of the stock has been obtained from California, and as a rule was more or less 



