24 PARASITES OF GIPSY AND BROWN-TAIL MOTHS. 
to the effect that if any member of the society should .be able to find 
parasitized midges he should send them to Dr. Fitch. 
Nothing ever came of this effort, but it is of interest on account of 
its apparent priority over other experimentation of this kind. 
The next international attempt seems to have been made in 1873, 
when Planchon and Riley introduced into France an American 
predatory mite (Tyroglyphus phylloxere Riley) which feeds on the 
grapevine Phylloxera in the United States. The mite became estab- 
lished, but accomplished no appreciable results in the way of checking 
the famous grapevine pest. 
In 1874 efforts were made to send certain parasites of plant lice 
from England to New Zealand, but without results of value, although 
Coccinella undecimpunctata L. is said to have become established. 
In 1883 Riley imported the braconid Apanteles glomeratus into the ~ 
United States from Europe, where it 1s an abundant enemy of the 
imported cabbage worm (Pontia rape L.). This species has since 
established itself in the United States and has proved a valuable 
addition to the North American fauna. 
THE AUSTRALIAN LADYBIRD (Novius CARDINALIS MULS (IN THE UNITED STATES). 
But all previous experiments of this nature were completely over- 
shadowed by the remarkable success of the importation of (Vedalia) 
‘Novius cardinalis Muls. (fig. 4), a coccinellid beetle, or ladybird, 
from Australia into California in 1889. The orange and lemon groves 
of California had for some years been threatened with extinction by 
the injurious work of the fluted or cottony cushion scale (/cerya pur- 
chast Mask.) a large scale insect which the careful investigations of 
Prof. Riley and his force of entomologists at the United States 
Department of Agriculture had shown to have been originally 
imported, by accident, from Australia or from New Zealand, where it 
had originally been described by the New Zealand coccidologist, the 
late W. M. Maskell. The Division of Entomology had been for several 
years engaged in an active campaign against this insect, and had dis- 
‘covered washes which could be applied at a comparatively slight ex- 
pense and which would destroy the scale insect. It had also in the 
course of its investigations discovered the applicability of hydrocyanic- 
acid gas under tents as a method of fumigating orchards and destroy- 
ing the scale. The growers, however, had become so thoroughly dis- 
heartened by the ravages of the insect that they were no longer in a 
frame of mind to use even the cheap isecticide washes, and many of 
them were destroying their groves. In the meantime, through some 
correspondence in the search for the original home of the scale insect, 
Prof. Riley had discovered that while the species occurred in parts of 
Australia it was not injurious in those regions. In New Zealand it 
