Ladybirds Help To Check Pests.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19201, 15 October 1930, Page 6

Ladybirds Help To Check Pests .

Nature Notes.

By

James Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

AS NEW ZEALAND ladybirds are small and not very plentiful, it was necessary to invite some ladybirds from the Old Country and Australia to come and help check pestilent insects. The introduced ladybirds rank amongst the most beneficent insects in the Dominion. Some fifty-five years ago New Zealand children held ladybirds in their open hands and watched them fly off in haste in response to the warning:— Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children are gone. The rhyme, and the belief it expresses, are believed to have originated in the hopfields of Kent, where fires were lighted after the picking to burn hop plants, in which ladybirds lived. The world has more than 2000 species of ladybirds. Of these, Australia has about 100, New Zealand only a few.

JN THE SERVICES, as in civil life, the clean-shaven face is now the prevailing fashion. One can hardly realise to-day that there was a time when red-tape regulations dominated the right of Army and Navy men to shave or not to shave, according to fancy. There is now a relaxation of the military authorities in regard to the moustache. It is really an echo the Crimean War, during which terrible winter the use of the razor by the troops was impossible, for on July 21, 1854, there was issued from the Horse Guards a memorandum permitting the wearing of the moustache in the Army,