300 
protection  of  tents  and  in  April,  1889,  they  were  set  free  and  dis- 
tributed in  various  parts  of  Southern  California. 
The  activity  of  Novius  cardinalis  in  the  same  year  (1889)  was 
extraordinary,  miraculous ! as  was  apparent  to  everybody,  and 
William  F.  Charming  of  Pasadena,  in  a letter  to  Riley  in  1890  ex- 
pressed himself  as  follows : 
“We  owe  to  the  Department  of  Agriculture  the  saving  of  our 
orange  industry  by  the  importation  of  the  Australian  coccinellid, 
Novius  cardinalis. 
“The  white  scalebugs  ( Icerya ) covered  our  orange  trees  with 
a horrible  leprosy.  They  spread  with  surprising  rapidity  and 
would  within  a few  years  have  made  impossible  the  cultivation  of 
citrus  fruit  on  the  whole  North  American  continent.  Novius 
achieved  the  task  of  destroying  entirely  the  Icerya  within  a few 
weeks  wherever  it  has  been  introduced. 
“In  the  spring  of  1889  I had  given  up  my  young  orange  trees 
(Washington  Navel)  as  irredeemable. 
“These  same  trees  (on  account  of  Novius)  have  yielded  in  the 
winter  of  1890  from  two  to  three  boxes  of  oranges.  The  result 
of  the  introduction  of  Novius  is  that  many  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  orange  trees  have  been  saved  this  spring  in  Southern  Cali- 
fornia.’’ 
And  rightly  Riley  added  in  1894:  “In  other  words  the  victory 
over  scalebugs  has  been  complete  and  will  practically  remain 
such.” 
The  story  of  the  introduction  of  this  pest,  its  spread  for  over 
twenty  years,  the  discomfort  it  caused,  and  the  numerous  experi- 
ments carried  out  to  fight  the  insect  and  the  final  reduction  to  a 
negligible  quantity  by  means  of  a small,  apparently  insignificant 
Coleopteron  introduced  on  purpose  from  Australia  will  always  re- 
main one  of  the  most  important  chapters  on  the  records  of  applied 
entomology. 
Besides  Novius  cardinalis  Koebele  introduced  from  Australia 
to  California  the  following  species:  Novius  Koebelii,  Olliff.,  N. 
bellus,  Blackb.,  Nozlus  sp.  and  the  Hymenopteron  Ophelosia 
crawfordi.  Rib,  which  had  been  first  observed  at  Adelaide  by 
Crawford. 
ICERYA  PURCHASI  IN  NEW  ZEALAND. 
When  Koebele  visited  New  Zealand  during  the  first  month  of 
1899  he  found  Icerya  spread  in  Auckland  and  Napier  in  which 
latter  locality  he  could  collect  also  very  many  Novius  which  has 
been  introduced  from  Australia. 
Icerya  existed  also  at  Nelson  and  deserves  to  be  recorded  on 
account  of  the  story  of  the  introduction  of  useful  insects.  Mr. 
Tinline  having  read  in  1887  in  South  Africa  at  Cape  Town  a 
paper  by  Ormerod,  according  to  which  a coccinellid  fought  Icer\a 
there,  secured  120  living  specimens  of  this  insect  (Rod aha 
