■on at Disio near Milan. Villa employed climbing carabids to destroy all the forms 

 feeding on the plants, staphylinus to destroy insects feeding in flowers, and 

 ground carabids to hunt out all insects that feed at the surface of the ground. 



From 1850-1873, Rondani, an ItaHan. made the most valuable contributions to 

 the study of parasitology. He was of the opinion, however, that parasites were 

 far more important than birds as control factors. He said: "The policing of the 

 fields cannot be entrusted to birds because they are unreliable and kill the guilty 

 with the innocent ; they are robbers as well as guardians of the field products, 

 and therefore do not yield the most, and sometimes any calculable advantage, if 

 not, even more farm than good in the very things which were sought to be saved 

 by their means". 



Perris and Decaux of France in the seventies and eighties advocated strongly 

 the use of parasites, and Berlese and Del Guercio of Italy later recognized and 

 emphasized the value of entomophagous insects rather than insectivorous birds. 



Lady beetles ("lady birds." "lady bugs") or 

 coccinellids; a— larva; b— pupa; c— imago; all much 

 enlarged. (U. S. Bu. Ent.) 



Syrphus flies; i and 2, adults; 3, larvae eating 

 plant lice; lower figure contracted larva; 5 and b. 

 view of lar\a, enlarged, and pupa. 



In this connection it is interesting to note Silvestri's own opinion. He says : 

 "I, for my part, believe that the usefulness and the harm of insectivorous birds 

 balance each other and that more frequently the former may be superior to the 

 latter, considering things only from the viewpoint of immediate agricultural 

 interest." 



The utilization of parasites for the control of injurious insects has been 

 attempted on the greatest scale in New England in connection with the suppres- 

 sion of the Gypsy and Brown Tail Caterpillars. These pests came to America 

 without their parasites and as the native parasites did not appear to relish them 

 the new arrivals multiplied exceedingly and became a serious menace to shade and 

 forest trees. 



Efforts were then made to introduce its foreign parasites, but the difficulties 

 of the task soon became apparent. Besides the labor of gathering sufficient num- 

 bers and of transporting them without loss, there was much trouble in sorting 



