CHAPTER X. LADYBIRDS, 

 TOADS, AND CHICKENS 



I HAVE just referred to Black's Gardening 

 Dictionary, an excellent book of reference, 

 published in London. It requires twenty- 

 six pages to describe "insect pests" in the 

 garden, while the "insect friends" are dis- 

 posed of in three pages. The most beneficent 

 of these friends is the ladybird. 



The French call the ladybird bete a bon 

 Dieu, and it certainly does seem as if this little 

 beetle had been specially sent from heaven to 

 protect and encourage gardeners and orchard- 

 ists. I happened to be in California one winter 

 when there were tremendous excitement and 

 great joy among lemon and orange growers 

 because a remedy had at last been found for the 

 fluted scale, which threatened the extinction 

 of the whole citrus industry in that state. Max 

 Nebelung, my brother-in-law, took me out 

 gleefully to let me see how the Australian lady- 

 bird (also called ladybug) was annihilating the 

 pestiferous San Jose scale, which bears the 

 appropriate name of Aspidiotus perniciosus. 

 The trunks and branches of most of the family's 

 trees (a few years ago $100,000 was offered for 

 this orchard) were completely covered with these 

 minute sap-sucking insects, but hundreds of lady- 

 bugs were devouring them eagerly, and the best 

 part of it was that they did not leave a single 

 enemy on a tree when they flew to the next. 



