560 THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF INSECTS AS A CLASS. 



after these insects, by their rapid multiplication and voracious habits, 

 had absolutely destroyed the cottony cushion scale in the orange 

 groves of the State, a result which practically saved millions of dollars 

 to California and which attracted the attention of everyone interested in 

 science or agriculture, a most unfortunate controversy ensued between 

 Dr. Eiley and the California State board of horticulture as to the 

 placing of the credit of carrying out this wonderfully successful experi- 

 ment. This controversy embittered the last days of both Dr. Eiley 

 and Mr. McCoppin, and was the cause of a disturbance of the formerly 

 pleasant relations between the United States Department of Agricul- 

 ture and the State board of horticulture of California, which has only 

 recently been overcome. 



Following this successful experiment, the same insect, Novius cardi- 

 nalis, was sent to South Africa, where it exterminated the white or 

 fluted scale in that colony. The next year it was sent to Egypt, where 

 it exterminated a congeneric scale insect in the gardens of Alexandria. 



The following year Mr. Koebele, still an agent of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, was sent, with the consent of the Hon. 

 Jeremiah Eusk, but at the expense of the California State Board of 

 Horticulture, to Australia, New Zealand, and the Fiji Islands, for the 

 purpose of securing other valuable beneficial insects for importation 

 into California. . Thousands of such insects, comprising a number of 

 different species, nearly all, however, of them Coccinellids, or lady 

 birds, were sent over and established in California. Several of these 

 species are still living in different parts of the State. The overwhelm- 

 ing success of the importation of Novius cardinalis was not repeated, 

 but one of the insects brought over at that time, namely, Bhizobius 

 ventralis, has unquestionably ridden many olive groves of the destruc- 

 tive black scale, and is to-day present in many other orchards in such 

 numbers that the scale practically makes no headway. 



After this second Oriental trip the relations between the Department 

 of Agriculture and the State Board of Horticulture of California 

 became so strained that the California agents of the Department were 

 given their choice by the honorable Secretary of Agriculture to resign 

 their j>ositions or be transferred to Washington. Mr. Koebele resigned 

 and was soon after employed by the then newly established Hawaiian 

 Eepublic for the purpose of traveling in different countries and collect- 

 ing 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 insects, 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 appointed by 



