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These facts account for its exceptionally rapid work, for in point of fact, 

 within a year and a half of its first introduction, it had practically 

 cleared off the Fluted Scale throughout the infested region. The expres- 

 sions of two well-known people may be quoted here to illustrate the gen- 

 eral verdict. Prof. W. A. Henry, Director of the Wisconsin Agricul- 

 ture Experiment Station, who visited California in 1889, reported that 

 the work of Vedalia was u the finest illustration possible of the value 

 of the Department to give the people aid in time of distress. And the 

 distress was very great indeed." Mr. William F. Channing, of Pasa- 

 dena, son of the eminent Unitarian divine, wrote two years later: 



We owe to the Agricultural Department the rescue of our orange culture by the 

 importation of the Australian ladybird, Vedalia cardlnalis. 



The white scales were incrusting our orange trees with a hideous leprosy. They 

 spread with wonderful rapidity and would have made citrus growth on the whole 

 North American continent impossible within a few years. It took the Vedalia, 

 where introduced, only a few weeks absolutely to clean out the white scale. The 

 deliverance was more like a miracle than anything I have ever seen. In the spring 

 of 1889 I had abandoned my young Washington navel orange trees as irrecoverable. 

 Those same trees bore from two to three boxes of oranges apiece at the end of the 

 season (or winter and spring of 1890). The consequence of the deliverance is that 

 many hundreds of thousands of orange trees (navels almost exclusively) have been 

 set out in southern California this last spring. 



In other words, the victory over the scale was complete and will prac- 

 tically remain so. The history of the introduction of this pest, its 

 spread for upwards of twenty years, and the discouragement which 

 resulted, the numerous experiments which were made to overcome the 

 insect, and its final reduction to unimportant numbers by means of an 

 apparently insignificant little beetle imported for the purpose from 

 Australia will always remain one of the most interesting stories in the 

 records of practical entomology. 



The Vedalia has since been successfully colonized at the Cape of 

 Good Hope and in Egypt, and has produced the same results in each 

 case. In Egypt the Vedalia was introduced to prey upon an allied 

 species of leery a ( I. cegyptiacum, Douglas). We hope soon to be able to 

 send the same insect to India, where it has recently transpired that 

 Icerya cegyptiacum occurs, while recent information received from Phra 

 Suriya, royal commissioner of Siam at Chicago, would indicate that its 

 introduction into Siam for the same or a closely allied insect will be 

 desirable in the near future. 



In fact, the success of the experiment was so striking and so impor- 

 tant, and resulted in the saving to California of an industry of so great 

 a money value, that it has given rise, not only in the popular mind but 

 in the minds of a certain class of entomologists also, to the idea that 

 remedial work against injurious insects should be concentrated upon 

 this one line of action, and that our best hope for their destruction 

 lies with the parasitic and predaceous species, not to mention fungus and 

 bacterial diseases. From an extreme of comparative incredulity the 



