Cleaned Up a Pest.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20454, 6 November 1934, Page 6

Cleaned Up a Pest.

Nature Notes

By

James Drummond.

F.L.S.. F.Z.S.

dk FTER BEKS, ladybirds rank for usefulness in New Zealand in a different way. They establish no .industry, but they are indispensable to farmers, gardeners, orchardists and foresters. They clean up aphids on cabbages, turnips, grain and fruit trees. They destroy scale insects on fruit trees, raspberry canes, gooseberry' bushes and gum trees. The most notorious member of this injurious gang is the cottony-cushion scale. Occurring in New Zealand and in Australia, the conclusion may be drawn that it is an Australian which came to New Zealand as a stowaway. The species became notorious in New Zealand fifty-six years ago, when it destroyed a hedge of kangaroo acacia belonging to Dr Purchas in Auckland. Inquiries by’ Mr W. M. Maskell. Registrar of the New Zealand University, a close student of scale insects, disclosed an alarming position. The cottony-cushion scale in Auckland was attacking many’ species of plants, from apple trees to cypresses, pines, gorse and roses. Promptly’, the Department of Agriculture introduced the cottony-cushion scale's arch enemy, an Australian lady’bird. This beneficent insect, Yedalia cardinalis. set to work so willingly and with such good results, destroying the scale insect wherever the pest placed its fluted eggbags, each bag containing hundreds of eggs, that the pest was checked and the menace of a calamity removed.