THE NEW EARTH 



and fruit. The stock was sold to others with- 

 out knowledge that the scale was on it, and 

 in a comparatively short time, so incredibly 

 rapid was the spread of the pest, the whole 

 citrus fruit industry of Southern California 

 was threatened with extinction. While orange 

 shipments were not then as large as under 

 later development, they were yet steadily in- 

 creasing so that for the year before the scale 

 was introduced about eight thousand car-loads 

 were shipped. When the scale got fairly at 

 work, the shipments dropped to six hundred 

 cars in a year. Nothing availed. Fumigations 

 and washes were useless. Sprays were ineffec- 

 tual. Digging up infected orchards and burn- 

 ing the trees, quite as buildings in the path 

 of a tremendous conflagration are dynamited 

 to stay the flames, had no effect, for the pest 

 had now spread to all vegetation and was 

 rapidly turning the country back into the 

 desert from which it had originally been 

 wrested. 



At this critical juncture help came from an 

 unexpected source. A tiny insect, a beautiful 

 little thing, brilliant red in color, not more 

 than the sixteenth of an inch in diameter, one 



90 



