February 17, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



241 



After this second Oriental trip the rela- 

 tions between the Department of Agricul- 

 ture and the State Board of Horticulture of 

 California became so strained that the Cali- 

 fornia agents of the Department were given 

 their choice by the Honorable Secretary of 

 Agriculture to resign their positions or be 

 transferred to Washington. Mr. Koebele 

 resigned and was soon after employed by 

 the then newly established Hawaiian Re- 

 public for the purpose of travelling in dif- 

 ferent countries and collecting beneficial 

 insects to be introduced into Hawaii for the 

 purpose of destroying injurious insects. It 

 is difficult at this time to ascertain the 

 exact results of the more recent portion of 

 this work. Mr. Koebele's own published 

 reports have dealt less with results than 

 with the details of the introduction of in- 

 sects, and anonymous newspaper reports 

 are not to be accepted as scientific evidence. 

 Fortunately, however, one of the collectors 

 of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science, Mr. E. E. C. Perkins, was 

 in Hawaii during 1896 and made a report 

 on Mr. Koebele's work to the committee ap- 

 pointed by the Royal Society and the Brit- 

 ish Association for investigating the fauna 

 of the Sandwich Islands, which was pub- 

 lished in Nature for March 25, 1897. From 

 this report it appears that the introduction 

 of Coccinella repanda from Ceylon, Australia 

 and China was so successful in the extermi- 

 nation of plant-lice upon sugar cane and 

 other crops as to obviate all necessity for 

 spraying. The introduction of Cryptokemus 

 montrouzieri from Australia resulted in the 

 entire recovery of the coffee plants and 

 other trees which were on the point of be- 

 ing totally destroyed by the scale insect 

 known as Pidvinaria psidii. Eight other 

 introduced species had at the date of writ- 

 ing (November, 1896) been entirely natu- 

 ralized and were reported as doing good 

 V70rk against certain scale insects. A Chal- 

 cis fly, Chalcis obscurata, introduced from 



China and Japan, multiplied enormously at 

 the expense of an injurious caterpillar 

 which had severely attacked banana and 

 palm trees. Mr. Koebele, when visiting 

 Washington during November, 1898, men- 

 tioned a number of other importations of 

 beneficial insects into Hawaii, about which 

 it is as yet too early to speak. 



A very recent instance of an international 

 importation of striking value is the sending 

 of Novius cardinalis from this country to 

 Portugal, where the white or fluted scale 

 has been checked and in many orchards ex- 

 terminated in the course of a single year. 

 This importation was made by the writer 

 with the invaluable assistance of the Cali- 

 fornia State Board of Horticulture. 



Other experiments in this line are under 

 way. A parasite of certain wax scales, 

 which are abundant and injurious in the 

 South, has been imported by the writer 

 from Italy, with the cooperation of Pro- 

 fessor Antonio Berlese, of the Royal Scuola 

 di Agricoltura di Portici ; while an effort is 

 being made to bring from Europe insects 

 which will prey upon the Gipsy moth which 

 has been so great a plague about Boston ; 

 and other parasites of injurious scale insects 

 in foreign countries are being studied with 

 the purpose of eventually obtaining their 

 introduction into the United States. 



AS DESTROYERS OF NOXIOUS PLANTS. 



Just as we have shown how important is 

 the role played by insects in the destruction 

 of cultivated and useful plants, it will be 

 easy to indicate their importance as de- 

 stroyers of weeds and other noxious plants. 

 We need only mention the common and 

 cosmopolitan thistle butterfly (Pyrameis car- 

 dui), the equally common milkweed butter- 

 fly {Anosia plexippus'), the purslane cater- 

 pillar {Copidryas gloveri), the burdock beetle 

 ( Gastroidea cyanea) , and the purslane sphinx 

 moth (^Deilephila lineata) to recall to the 

 mind of the experienced entomologist many 



