Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1897 — Saved by Ladybirds. [ARTICLE]

Saved by Ladybirds.

The secretary of a committee appointed by the Royal Society of I.ondon and the British Association for the Advancement of Science to Investigate the fauna of the Sandwich Islands has recently given an lutwestln r , account of the triumphs achieved by eoccinella beetles, or “ladybirds,” introduced into those islands to combat the aphides and other injurious insects which were destroying sugar-cane and fruit trees. The ladybirds, as soon as they had bred in sufficient numbers, swept everything before them, and saved the trees and plants front threatened destruction. This method of setting one species of insect at war with another, for the bene tit of man, has proved particularly successful in the Sandwich Islands, where the struggle for existence among native Insects lms not been so severe as In continental countries, and where the hardy iuvaders were as resistless as the trained legions of Rome when pitted against barbarian hordes.