THE ASIATIC-LADYBIRD ENEMY OF THE SCALE. 67 
peach trees, covering about 75 acres, and adjoined a very much larger 
orchard belonging to the same owner, containing 250,000 trees. The 
ladybirds were liberated in August, 1902, in the smaller orchard. An 
examination of this orchard in July, 1903, indicated that the beetles 
were rapidly spreading, and that they would soon cover the smaller 
orchard. An estimate at this time of the number of ladybirds in all 
stages placed the total at somewhere between 25,000 and 40,000, and 
from observations breeding evidently continued at this point up to 
January. There was therefore in this latitude at least a very flatter- 
ing outlook for good results from the imported beetle. 
None of the colonies sent to northern States, that is, north of the 
District of Columbia, became established nor gave any useful results, 
and subsequent experience, and particularly the elaborate tests con- 
ducted by Dr. J. B. Smith, in New Jersey, would indicate that there 
is very little likelihood of usefulness from this beetle for northern 
fruit regions. That it may be established in the South was fully 
demonstrated by the experience noted in Georgia and by the experience 
in the orchard attached to the insectary of this Bureau, and in some 
other similar experiments where the results were perhaps less marked. 
At the time that this beetle began to demonstrate its probable con- 
siderable usefulness in Georgia and elsewhere in the South, the prac- 
tical value of the lime, sulfur, and salt wash became fully established, 
and all commercial orchards were regularly subjected to spraying 
operations with this mixture. The result was that the scale food of 
the imported beetle was almost complete!} 7 destroyed; and this was 
true in the principal orchards where it was doing its best work. As 
a consequence all of the beetles starved or their numbers were greatly 
reduced. 
The local stock of ladybirds in Washington practically disappeared 
with the gradual extermination of the scale food, and by the action of 
a native parasite which began to attack it after the first year. This 
parasite is one that we had previously reared from native ladybirds 
and had supposed it to be a secondary parasite; but the fact that it is 
a primary parasite became fully demonstrated, and it attacked the 
Washington colon} 7 with such vigor as to practically exterminate it. 
Fortunately this same parasite does not seem to have been equally 
active in the case of the southern colonies, but it will undoubtedly 
always be a bar to great usefulness from this and allied ladybirds/' 
A very serious difficulty in the introduction and establishment of a 
predaceous insect like this Asiatic ladybird beetle, which has rather 
limited powers of flight and is not carried about on nursery stock as 
are true parasites, is the very scattering nature of infestation in this 
country. In spite of the fact that the San Jose scale has become so 
a See Proc. Ent. Soc. Washington, Vol. V, No. 2, pp. 138, 139, 1903. 
