48 
and upon the willow. We figure the adult insect (Fig. 17) in order to 
enable its ready recognition should this destructive habit recur. 
THE BLACK AUSTRALIAN LADYBIRD IN CALIFORNIA. 
Complaints are being made in California, as we notice from the Rural 
Californian for May, that the black ladybird, Rhizobius ventralis, which 
was one of the late importations from Australia, from which great results 
were expected in the destruction of noxious orchard scale-insects, has 
not been doing its duty in the orchards in which colonies were placed. 
The phraseology of the notice is as follows : " The opinion was expressed 
at the meeting of the Pomological Society at Pasadena that the black 
ladybird was not showing up in the orchards in which colonies had been 
placed." From this it might be supposed that they had not been seen, 
this spring in the orchards in question. 
ThePacific Rural Press of July 21, 1894, however, quotes a statement 
made by Mr. T. N. Snow in the Santa Barbara Press as to the progress 
of this ladybird in the orchard of Mr. Ellwood Cooper, at Ellwood, Cal. 
According to this account a little more than two years ago 50 specimens 
of Rhizobius ventralis were placed in this orchard, where they multiplied 
so rapidly that in October, 1893, Quarantine Officer Alexander Craw 
was able to secure there over 500 colonies, numbering more than 
10,000, for colonization in various parts of the State. On June 27, 
1894, Mr. Craw, it is reported, again visited this orchard, and found not 
one black scale left of the army which had been there, the Rhizobius 
having made a perfect clearance. Mr. Craw is reported to have 
expressed to Mr. Snow his belief that by next November there would 
not be a black scale remaining in Ellwood. 
THE GRAPE-VINE ROOT-WORM. 
In Newspaper Bulletin No. 140 of the Ohio Experiment Station Mr. 
F. M. Webster calls attention to the injury done to the roots of grape- 
vines about Cleveland by the larvse of the grape-vine root worm (Fidia 
viticida). The larva of this insect, the adult of whicli has for many 
years been known as a leaf feeder upon the grape, has never been known 
with certainty. It has been suspected that it feeds upon the roots, 
but Mr. Webster is the first to prove this point and to rear the adult 
from the larva. The experiments which he has made show that the 
larvae are readily killed by a very small amount of bisulphide of car- 
bon, while the beetles may be readily destroyed with the arsenites. 
AN INVASION OF THE u FEATHERED GOTHIC " MOTH IN NORTHERN 
FRANCE. 
Dr. P. Marchal has an interesting note on the " feathered Gothic" 
moth (Heliophobus popnlaris) in the Bulletin of the Entomological Soci- 
ety of France, which he read at the meeting of June 13, 1894. Under 
a commission from the Ministry of Agriculture he visited the infested 
