PESTS AND PARASITES

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8290, 19 September 1903, Page 4

PESTS AND PARASITES

There is a lady working amid the charmino- surroundings of Newnhain Ooliege, Caimbrfdge (says a Home paper) whose researches may be destined to do_ much for agriculture. She is the unofficial successor to Miss Ormerod, a wealthy lady who, after having made a study of pestiferous insects for many years, was appointed to the honorary position of zoologist to the of Agriculture, devoting her time to advising farmers with regard to the_means of clearin t insect pests from their fields and orchards. Miss' Alice L. Embleton, having just been awarded the Royal Socitey's Mackinnon studentship in biology, the object of which is to encourage branch of scientific research, lias decided to confine her investigations to the parasites which prey upon pestiferous insects, and which, if sufficiently numerous, migfit- kill off the pests altogether. "If my idea proves to be •a workable one," says Miss Embleton, "a means of getting ri'd of pests' will have been discovered which will be much more effective than the strongest ..of insecticides, for the encouragement of the parasite should be an easy matter. Roses, Tune trees, broadbeans, in fact, nearly everything that grow's is now completely at the mercy of -flies and insects which do great damage." Shortly after Christmas, when Miss Embleton read the first paper on the subject, a well-known entomologist at Naples published a work on the same subject, while he was quickly followed by a Russian scientist, so it is obvious that muck attention is being directed towards this means of alleviating the farmer's lot. A practical test has been made in California,- where ladybirds were imported as an antidote to a scaled insect which did great damage. As Miss'"Embleton is a charming young lady with gojden-brown hair, her appearance on the'lecture platform or in the accustomed haunts of the scientist always creates a surprise. "People always expect me to be an old woman,with"] •spectacles," she says; "and they are always j disappointed." . ' -She has published several j . pamphlets on-insect "pests; .'the -latest being'n one concerning the scaled insect- Tvhich'-kills .1 off ferns and palms.' She was .the first lady ' member of the I/innean Society, and "Eha, •first of her sex to read a. "paper before the; members. It-, is possible that, before long, the many hours which: Miss Embleton has spent in poring over a microscope ;will have been rewarded by a really valuable discovery. "One never knows, though," she says. -"R may end in nothing. Science re-search-is often very disappointing. -I once spent ten weeks in hatching some minute eggs only, to find at the end of all my trou- j ble that the insects were the wrong kind." !