[9] Report of the State Entomologist. 105 



where, as was known through correspondence, it had never been 

 recognized as a pest. It was suggested that search be made in 

 Australia by competent entomologists for its enemies, and if found, 

 that the attempt be made to introduce them into California. 

 Congress was appealed to for the appropriation needed for the 

 purpose, but perhaps deeming the project chimerical, it was not 

 granted. 



Professor C. V. Riley, chief of the entomological division of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, who was the first to 

 publicly recommend the measure, and to whom the credit is 

 largely due of conducting it, under difficulties, to its completion, 

 was at last able, through an appropriation made for the Melbourne 

 exposition of last year, and the kind agency of the Department of 

 State and the Melbourne commissioners, to dispatch to Australia 

 two of the assistants in his division, for the collection and trans- 

 mission hither of the supposed native enemies of the Icerya. 

 Their mission was successful. Over 12,000 specimens of parasites 

 and other enemies were collected and sent to Los Angeles, Cal., for 

 propagation. Among them were two species that have proved of 

 pre-eminent service ; one, a miniite two-winged fly, known as 

 Lestoplionus iceryce, the larvae of which live within the body of the 

 scale-insect ; and the other, a lady-bird, Vedalia cardinalis, of which 

 both the larva and the beetle prey upon the scale. Such a won- 

 derful prolificacy has the last-named insect displayed under the 

 fostering care given to its propagation, that of the 129 individuals 

 imported during the past winter, from its subsequent increase 

 there have been sent away in a single week 50,000, for distribution 

 throughout the orange orchards of the State. Their progeny may 

 now be estimated "by the millions," and in some localities, where 

 earliest introduced, the trees " are swarming with them." 



The success attending this undertaking, even in the brief time 

 that has elapsed, has really been phenomenal. The orange 

 grower now points to orchards which he was about to abandon, 

 where " to-day it is hard to find a single living scale." Mr. W. 

 Catton Grasby, of Adelaide, Australia, who has recently visited 

 this country to study its methods of teaching in natural history, 

 and who had part in the successful colonization of the scale 

 enemies, in that he had paid, in Adelaide, one pound ($5) a 

 head for a large number of them, has stated to me that he had 

 never witnessed such enthusiasm as that shown by the orange 

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