69 



If a system or theory be true, it will not require to be bolstered up with 

 misstatements and half truths ; and while American, European, and Australian 

 economic entomologists are quite ready to acknowledge that the field of 

 experiments with parasites is a wide one, and worthy of scientific investiga- 

 tion, as is shown by the work of many of them, they do not subscribe to the 

 Californian school, who claim that everything can be controlled with the 

 spreading of all kinds of parasites ; that if you have codling moth, scale, or 

 fruit-fly, just send into the office of the Horticultural Commissioners, and by 

 return of post you will have a package of parasites of the particular pest 

 forwarded, which you have only to liberate, and the insects do the rest. In 

 fact, the existence of such a theory as universal parasitism has not only done 

 a great deal of harm to the value of economic entomology, but to the pro- 

 ducers themselves. In New South Wales it delayed the passing of the very 

 necessary Vegetation Diseases Bill for some years ; for, as soon as the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture proposed to 'introduce a Bill to deal with the orchard 

 pests, they were met with the natural, if mistaken, outcry, " Why should we 

 be made to clean up our orchards, and spend money, when the Department 

 can send out to other countries and get us parasites that will do all that is 

 needed?" "Look at California," we were told, not knowing that under the 

 rule of the State Board of Horticulture the most drastic laws and regulations 

 in the world can be enforced against an infested orchard or larger area, 

 backed by all the powers of the State of California. Cutting down, rooting out, 

 and burning up orchards and gardens, can be carried out without consulting 

 the owners. 



Judging from former scares, such as the " White Fly," I am quite certain 

 that, if fruit-fly were to suddenly appear in any of the citrus orchards of 

 California, they would not wait to get parasites, but would have the whole 

 place dealt with at once by mechanical methods. 



When, however, we come beyond this branch of the parasitic question, and 

 propose to use a savage, carnivorous ant from another country to destroy 

 3'oung rabbits as a gentleman in South Africa proposed to send us a few years 

 ago, and was actually done in Texas, where Cook brought a tropical ant from 

 Guatemala to devour the Mexican boll weevil we come to more serious and 

 wide-reaching results from entomology run mad. 



Another phase of the work is the introduction of insects that are injurious 

 to plants in their o\vn country to destroy similar vegetation in another 

 country. Such was the introduction a few years ago, at the instigation of 

 the officers of the Sugar Planters' Association, of all the known insects that 

 destroy the Ian tana in Mexico into the Hawaiian Islands, to kill out this 

 shrub, which lias overrun the waste lands of these islands. This, also, 

 appealed to some of our landholders on the northern coast lands of New 

 South Wales, where the same kind of lantana bush occupies much of the 

 neglected lands from which the forest has been cleared. They entered into 

 correspondence with the authorities at Honolulu, and, on their advice, urged 

 our Government to introduce them, and turn about a dozen sorts of plant- 

 eating insects into the forests of our northern rivers. No thought was given 

 to the utterly different conditions in Australia of our forests. It was, too, 

 and is still, a very doubtful experiment in Hawaii, even if it ever does kill 

 out every root of lantana ; but it would have been criminal to allow an 

 introduction of such insects, most of which could do an immense amount of 

 damage to our cultivation and native forests. 



In every entomological laboratory let us have a well-equipped, up-to-date 

 insectarium, where the development of both friendly and injurious insects 

 can be studied under natural conditions ; and if we find a parasite that is 



