Masterpieces of Science 



inaries relating to the payment of expenses (in 

 which finally the Department of State kindly 

 assisted), one of Professor Riley's assistants, 

 a young German named Albert Koebele, who 

 had been with him for a number of years, 

 sailed for Australia in August, 1SS8. Koebele 

 was a skilled collector and an admirable 

 man for the purpose. He at once found that 

 Professor Riley's supposition was correct: 

 there existed in Australia small flies which laid 

 their eggs in the white scales, 

 and these eggs hatched into 

 grubs which devoured the pests. 

 He also found a remarkable little 

 ladybird, a small, reddish-brown 

 convex beetle, which breeds 

 with marvellous rapidity and 

 Vedalia, or which, with voracious appetite, 

 "Ladybird an( i at the same time with dis- 



criminating taste, devours scale 

 after scale, but eats fluted scales only — does not 

 attack other insects. This beneficial creature, 

 now known as the Australian ladybird, or the 

 Vedalia, Mr. Koebele at once began to collect 

 in large numbers, together with several other 

 insects found doing the same work. He packed 

 many hundreds of living specimens of the lady- 

 bird, with plenty of food, in tin boxes, and had 

 them placed on ice in the ice-box of the steamer 

 at Sydney; they were carried carefully to Cali- 

 fornia, where they were liberated upon orange 

 trees at Los Angeles. 



126 



