The San Francisco call., 1903-12-29
OUR FRIENDS, THE BUGS.

T HE account of the insects beneficial to California
horticulture, written by Alexander Craw and pub
lished in The Call is the story of victory the
minute enemies of the States prosperity. Time was
when insects grasshoppers down the chinch bugs
and still down in the scale of measurement assailed
crops in the United States, the farmer and planter
folded his hands and amened borrowed money to sub
stitute his lost crop and waited for the pass by
The country owes Horace Greeley and the New
York Tribune the first impulse to the study of ento-
mology which is now making the master of the
petty enemies of his prosperity The Tribune had for
of its interesting writer's Mrs. Upper, widely
known "the bee woman" whose studies of the bee
the beginning of all modern honey industry.
Out of them issued the Langstroth movable comb hive
and all of the beneficial devices which have taken the
place the old haphazard way of robbng the bees and
leaving them to their own devices, without assistance
against their insect enemies and without protection
against famine
Those studies in entomology turned attention to the
ravages of insect enemies well to the labor of
friends and the Agricultural Department
Washington has in Dr. Chittenden and its other ento
moogists skilled corps of scientific who devote
themselves the study of every insect known in the
country and California has in Mr. Craw scientific in
quarantine officer, who stands guard all i'm
ported trees vines and fruits that foreign insects
injurious kept III is the most important of
all foreign immigration agents, and the aliens he
excludes and which he denies asylum among the
most dangerous of immigrants
To the subject of insects, harmful and beneficial more
attention given here than in any other State in the
Union Here first applied the discovery that there
insects that feed upon and destroy the various
white black and purple scale insects that kill the orange
olive and other frut-producing trees. This discovery
has resulted in importing and breeding the various lady
bugs which have made citrus crop safe. We have
learned the OF another kind of useful insect The
ladybugs upon scale covered and keep up
perpetual picnic, increasing they go, until the orchard
is cleaned entirely Then Mr. Craw found that have
a minute insect native son of the Golden West which
properly encouraged into the black scale nhabits
place OF residence and proceeds up its hab
tation and then with its increased family into
others This little friend of does increase fast
breeds but it does destroy from three quarters
of the black scale every year, and the black adybrd
from Australia does the rest
We got the San Jose sale from China 1t arrived be-
fore we had immigration laws against such Aliens
and unfortunately named the San Jose scale the
injury of the good of that splendid fruit region
the Santa Clara valley. 1t is nearly exterminated
here thanks another internal parasite and ladybrd
bearing the royal of Rhzobius Toowoombae. The
San Jose scale carried East and the of bene
fetal insects is not we'll understood there here it
has in some sections become the of horticulture
The enormous benefit OF such work Mr.. Craws is
seen by glance the statistics of fruit export
which during the last year has been thousand carloads
week 1t estimated that this seasons orange export
will reach the high water mark of 10000 carloads For
weeks past the tonnage capacity of regular freight
of the Northern California orange belt has been
ceeded and special orange trains have been resorted
carry the fruit market The land around the county
poorhouse of Butte County planted oranges and the
supports the poor of that county The courthouse
park in Merced planted to oranges and the crop this
year 800 boxes Think of what this means, only by
way OF showing obligations to the entomologsts and
the beneficial insects they have discovered and applied
but a evidence of climate.
Eastern courthOuses surrounded by few decidu-
trees which stand bleak and bare against the cold
winter sky at this season. while in California the statue
OF Justice over trees which
the yellow fruit and the white blossoms for the next crop
appeal to the eye and the for the aroma of flowers
Even the pauper in this State bask in the of Decem
ber in the midst of laden with fruit which
provide for him the comforts he requires and relieve
the taxpayer of burden which is borne by our climate
and the adybird The rest of the horticultural world
will to California to learn how fight bugs with
bugs, and out of that knowledge the grasshopper the
chinch bug and the Hessian fly the weev and perhaps
the terrible boil that threatens make cotton
growing impossible will finally be overcome.