TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



145 



by Mr. Albert Koebele, when collecting beneficial insects for the State 

 Board of Horticulture of California. Twenty of these valuable beetles 

 reached us alive, and they have been of great service in cleaning out 

 the black scale in the coast regions. In the southwestern portion of 

 Alameda County, William Barry, Horticultural Commissioner for that 

 part of the county, made a canvass of the orchardists in Washington 

 township having five acres and over, and learned that since the intro- 

 duction of this beneficial insect nine years ago, they have saved over 

 $171,000 for disinfection. The Bhizohius ventralis breeds the year 

 around, and destroys the eggs, larvje, and adult "black scale."' Un- 

 fortunately they do not appear to thrive away from the sea breeze. At 

 Ellwood, in Santa Barbara County, Mr. Cooper before the introduction 

 of this ladybird spent from $3,000 to $5,000 per annum in spraying his 

 orchards with kerosene emulsion. Since then he has relied upon the 

 ladybirds, and his trees bear better and cleaner olives. We have a new 

 internal parasitic fly, ScuteUista cyanea, to which I will refer more fully 

 later on in this paper. 



The next serious pest introduced was the "cottony cushion scale" 

 {Icerya purchasi). This came on trees brought into Menlo Park from 

 Australia in 1868; in the eighties it had spread over a great portion of 

 the State, and it was such a destructive insect that the orange industry 

 was threatened. Two years after it attacked the Shorb groves at San 

 Gabriel, it reduced the crop from fifty carloads per annum to six cars 

 of inferior oranges on that estate alone. The expensive fight made 

 against this pest in California with sprays, fumigation, etc., did more 

 than any other one thing to advance the study of economic entomology 

 and was the cause of our belief that, where the scale was a native, 

 nature had a more efficient and cheaper remedy than our artificial ap- 

 pliances. Once started in this direction, our orchardists held meetings, 

 in Los Angeles especially, and discussed ways and means to have an 

 expert sent to Australia to make a search for the parasite that pre- 

 vented the great increase of that scale in Australia and to introduce it 

 into CaUfornia. A Californian, the late Frank McCoppin of San Fran- 

 cisco, was appointed United States Commissioner to the World's Fair 

 in Melbourne in 1888, and generously put aside $2,000 of the funds 

 allowed him for his expenses to defray the cost of an expert entomolo- 

 gist to be attached to his retinue. Mr. Albert Koebele of Alameda, an 

 attache of the Department of Agriculture of the United States, was 

 selected, and he discovered and sent us the Vedalia cardinalis^ a lady- 

 bird that was hardly known by the entomologists of its native country. 

 Since then the State Board of Horticulture has taken the precaution to 

 keep a stock of this valuable ladybird under artificial propagation, or 

 rather their propagation in confinement in the San Francisco office. 

 In this way we can generally furnish colonies promptly upon applica- 

 10 F-GC 



