insect
parasite or predatory beetle, which killed it off. It became therefore
important to send a trained man to Australia to investigate this
promising line.

After many difficulties in arranging preliminaries relating to the
payment of expenses (in which finally the Department of State kindly
assisted), one of Professor Riley's assistants, a young German named
Albert Koebele, who had been with him for a number of years, sailed for
Australia in August, 1888. Koebele was a skilled collector and an
admirable man for the purpose. He at once found that Professor Riley's
supposition was correct: there existed in Australia small flies which
laid their eggs in the white scales, and these eggs hatched into grubs
which devoured the pests. He also found a remarkable little ladybird, a
small, reddish-brown convex beetle, which breeds with marvellous
rapidity and which, with voracious appetite, and at the same time with
discriminating taste, devours scale after scale, but eats fluted scales
only--does not attack other insects. This beneficial creature, now known
as the Australian ladybird, or the Vedalia, Mr. Koebele at once began to
collect in large numbers, together with several other insects found
doing the same work. He packed many hundreds of living specimens of the
ladybird, with plenty of food, in tin boxes, and had them placed on ice
in the ice-box of the steamer at Sydney; they were carried carefully to
California, where they were liberated upon orange trees at Los Angeles.

[Illustration: Vedalia, or Australian Ladybird]

These sendings were repeated for several months, and Mr. Koebele, on his
return in April, 1889, brought with him many more living specimens which
he had collected on his way home in New Zealand, where the same Vedalia
had been accidentally introduced a year or so before.

[Illustration: Larvae of Vedalia eating White Scale]

The result more than justified the most sanguine expectations. The
ladybirds reached Los Angeles alive, and, with appetites sharpened by
their long ocean voyage, immediately fell upon the devoted scales and
devoured them one after another almost without rest. Their hunger
temporarily satisfied, they began to lay eggs. These eggs hatched in a
few days into active grub-like creatures--the larvae of the beetles--and
these grubs proved as voracious as their parents. They devoured the
scales right and left, and in less than a month transformed once more to
beetles.

And so the wo