WHITE BUTTERFLY

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23315, 29 April 1941, Page 10

WHITE BUTTERFLY

INVASION OF AUSTRALIA

On a front of 100 miles an army in white is invading Australia, defying mountains, rivers, and forests and increasing in numbers as it goes (says the Australian News Letter issued by the Empire Press Union, Australian Section). It is the army of the Cabbage White Butterfly that has already caused havoc in suburban gardens, where cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, and broccoli went down before the attack. It is regarded all over the world as potentially the most destructive of the insects that attack these plants. The white butterfly came into Australia in 1239. The first specimen was found in the University Gardens. Melbourne, in March that year, and then numbers of others were reported from Williamstown. Before that, the nearest place where the cabbage white butterfly had been found was New Zealand, and it is believed some came here in vegetables from ships.

A map of white butterfly distribution shows that at the end of the autumn of 1939 they were still confined to a small area about Melbourne. Next season they had flown -in thousands to the east and west of the state and north across the river Murray into New South ’Wales. Now they are in Tasmania, and are working far west in Victoria toward South' Australia. Victorian conditions suit them well, and, as they have spread in America as far south as the Gulf states, they will probably go far north in Australia.

Rain does not worry them, and they can fly for hundreds of miles. They have been sedn hundreds of miles,out over the Atlantic and still flying west. In New Zealand (says the News Letter) scientists are trying to control the butterfly by setting wasps on to them. Large supplies of two parasitic wasps have been introduced from England and liberated. In Victoria the entomologists are also working on methods of biological control, but they are still reticent about this work.