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heads of wheat were crowded with hungry aphids, or plant-lice. These 

 myriad lice, often five or six around a kernel of wheat, and two 

 hundred on a single head, were sucking the sap and very vitality from 

 the forming kernels. They were rapidly blighting the grain, and unless 

 some friendly hand were raised against them our wheat crop would be 

 utterly ruined. Even then, when the lice were countless in numbers, 

 and when the winged forms were rapidly spreading to the oat fields, the 

 hand of deliverance was easily discerned in the comparatively few but 

 wondrously prolific enemies of the lice, which had already sounded a 

 halt in the march of destruction. A week later and the enemies of the 

 aphids are in the ascendency, and to-day the lice are nearly extermi- 

 nated, the wheat crop is rescued, and the oat crop saved. Close observa- 

 tion demonstrates these facts. Even the careless eye can see the savage 

 Braconids dining on the lice, or the fatal egg laid, which dooms the 

 louse that receives it. These tiny flies have been the great factor in 

 ridding our fields of the pestiferous lice. Tiny as they are, they will 

 save millions of dollars to the farmers of Michigan and adjacent States 

 during this single year." I may add here that in another week the 

 entire wheat crop of that year would have been ruined; as it was, about 

 one third of the crop was saved. 



In the last few weeks I have received twigs of lemon and orange trees 

 literally covered with the soft brown scale, Lecanium hesperidum. I 

 need not say to those present that unless these scale insects are removed 

 or destroyed, that the infested citrus trees soon will be. Some of these 

 brown scales I find very generally punctured — often six, seven, eight, 

 or even nine out of ten, are thus destroyed by a Chalcid parasite. 

 These Chalcid flies will soon be at starvation's door, as all the scales 

 will be eaten by them. How plainly is it, then, the part of wisdom to 

 take twigs and branches from these trees and hang them in other trees 

 that are suffering from this Lecanium hesperidum, and without the 

 presence of the parasitic Chalcids. 



Within a few weeks I have received the yellow scale, Aspidiotus 

 citrinus, thickly covering oranges and orange leaves from Sacramento. 

 I have received the same from the region of Alhambra, near Los 

 Angeles, which were almost exterminated by Chalcid flies. Who will 

 say that it would not be the very height of wisdom to bring the yellow 

 scales from Alhambra to Sacramento. It would save from death the 

 Chalcids of the Alhambra district and seal the doom of the yellow scale 

 insects of Sacramento. 



I have said enough to show that we have the means right at hand, 

 right in our own State and country, of staying, possibly of extermi- 

 nating, some of our worst insect pests. A wise and timely distribution 

 of our own Chilocorus, the introduction of the Eastern scale-destroying 

 Chalcids, the importation from over the Rockies of such Braconids as 

 those that so quickly banished the grain lice, or the distribution of the 

 Chalcid flies that are locally banishing the soft brown and yellow scale 

 insects, to localities where they are yet strangers; all of this could be 

 done at a very light expense, and with great if not positive promise of 

 tremendous benefit. 



Spraying and fumigation often pay a good profit on the expense. But 

 they are expensive, often injurious to fruit and foliage, and are rarely 

 ever so effective as to make a speedy repetition of the same expensive 

 treatment unnecessary. These parasitic and predaceous insects are far 



