Jose scale to his premises. Undoubtedly this scale insect came to this country in some such way on ornamental stock from North China. The Asiatic Ladybird, the Natural Enemy of the San Jose Scale.

Throughout the region investigated in China where the San Jose scale occurs the natural agency keeping the scale in check was evidently a small ladybird (Chilocorus similis), which was feeding voraciously upon it wherever the scale was found in any numbers. A considerable quantity of these beetles was collected in both Japan and China and sent by mail to Washington. Unfortunately, most of the specimens died in transit or during the first winter. Two individuals, however, survived, and during the first summer from these two some five thousand or more beetles were secured. The original stock was kept in cages, but later on the insects were liberated in an experimental orchard attached to the insectary of the department. During the first summer a considerable number of colonies were sent out to various states placing them in charge, in the main, of the entomologists connected with the state experiment stations. During the summer of 1903, the second one since the introduction of this insect, some thirty or forty additional colonies were distributed. A good many of these colonies were liberated under rather unfavorable conditions, and the beetles probably perished. The best success has come from certain colonies sent to Georgia. One of these, located at Marshallville, presents a most satisfactory outcome. This orchard contains some 17,000 peach trees, covering about 85 acres, and has lying immediately adjoining it a much larger orchard belonging to the same owner, containing 250,000 trees, all scatteringly infested with scale. The ladybirds were liberated in August, 1902, in the smaller orchard. An examination of this orchard in July, 1903, indicated that the beetles were rapidly spreading and that they would soon cover the smaller orchard. A rough estimate at this time of the number of ladybirds in all stages places the total at somewhere between 25,000 and 40,000. In Georgia the beetles evidently continued breeding up to January. There is, therefore, in this orchard at least, a very flattering outlook for good results from the imported beetle. Other colonies placed where there were only two or three or but a few trees have not yielded very satisfactory results. This outcome is not especially surprising, as under such circumstances the beetles are very apt to fly away and become lost. We are endeavoring, therefore, to place colonies where there are rather large bodies of trees infested with scales. After the beetle becomes once well established, distribution can be more general, but until this end is reached it is probably wiser not to waste material in sending specimens for colonization to small orchards or gardens or for liberation on a few trees. In Japan and China where the Chilocorus occurs rather generally, it finds food for itself in every dooryard, the white

In

peach scale being very widely distributed in those countries and the San Jose scale also in northern China and portions of Japan. In this country, on the other hand, the San Jose scale is practically its only host insect, and in spite of the wide dissemination of the San Jose scale, it still occurs after all in a very scattering way in orchards here and there, with often twenty or thirty miles between places of infestation. This imported insect can not, therefore, multiply and extend itself as rapidly and naturally as would be the case if the San Jose scale occurred more generally. For this reason it will be necessary to distribute the imported beetle artificially for some time. Georgia, Alabama and other regions where there are general orchard districts it will undoubtedly be able to take hold much better than it will in regions where orchards are more scattering and of smaller area. Ultimately it is hoped that it will become established in America and have the same beneficial action which it now has in China and Japan. It probably will not be a complete remedy for the San Jose scale for the reasons already indicated, but if it will keep the San Jose scale in check as much as it does in its native country it will be of very decided service. One of its chief advantages will be the fact that it ultimately will take hold of the scale in many small orchards and gardens, the owners of which would be indifferent and would not undertake remedial operations, and thus furnish centers for additional reinfestation.

The importation of this insect can not work anything but good. It feeds only on scale insects, and ultimately may feed on certain of our native species as well as on the San Jose scale. It is a most voracious feeder, and has been observed to eat as many as five or six scale insects a minute, and even an average of but one a minute would give a total of 1,440 scale insects destroyed per day. The appetite of the larva seems never to be satisfied, and it is eating practically all the time. The adults also feed actively on the scale.

The chief drawback to this importation is the fact that several of our native predaceous insects have at once acquired a rather decided liking for the larvæ of the Chilocorus. A parasitic insect of our native ladybirds has also been attacking it in considerable numbers. These predaceous and parasitic insects may be sufficient to prevent this imported ladybird from giving the benefits which it ought. They have been especially in evidence in the Washington colony, but do not seem to have done any considerable damage in the more southern colonies referred to, and it may be that the ladybird will not suffer materially from them.

SAVING THE MISSISSIPPI'S SOURCE.

BY H. M. KINGERY,

WABASH COLLEGE.

THE

HE true American takes an honest pride in recounting the natural features of our country-its mountains, plains, lakes, rivers, cataracts, trees-all, in Yankee parlance, 'the greatest things on earth.' Of them all none is more truly worthy of admiration than the great river which practically spans our territory from north to south, draining an inland empire on its way. My vacation trip last summer took me to its source, and it is of this, with the peril that has threatened it and the measures taken to avert the peril, that I wish to tell briefly in this article.

We need not enter upon the vexed question as to what and where the real source is. Every explorer has found some new lake or river or spring which by ingenious definition he could make out to be the 'original and only' beginning of the Mississippi. Schoolcraft and the schoolboy agree in saying it is Lake Itasca; but there are streams entering that lake which if followed to their source would increase by a mile or two the total length of the 'Father of Waters,' and so satisfy more fully our national taste for bigness. The largest of these affluents is the 'Infant Mississippi,' discovered and named in 1836 by Jean Nicollet; but claims are made also for Mary river and lake, for Elk Lake and its tiny outlet, for the Mississippi springs, and for Hernando de Soto Lake. The truth is that each of these contributes its quota to the making of the Mississippi, while Itasca is the reservoir in which all their contributions are assembled. To the geographer it is a most interesting region, close to the watershed whence flow streams of widely different destination. The cook of a surveyors' camp located on this watershed used to boast that he could throw his dishwater to the left and send it to the Arctic Ocean, or to the right and start it towards the Gulf of Mexico. Not far away rise other streams whose waters find their way to Lake Superior and so to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This peculiar configuration was known to the early French explorers, who gave the group of low hills the expressive title Hauteurs des Terres.'

Lake Itasca lies in a valley of irregular horseshoe shape, encircled by a range of low hills, and is the largest of a considerable number of lakes in the same depression. Its form is most peculiar (as may be seen by a reference to the accompanying map); and it was doubtless

this peculiar shape, rudely resembling an elk's head with nose to the north and horns branching out towards the south, that suggested to the Indians the name they gave it-Elk Lake, translated by the French

into Lac la Biche.

The present name is said to have been the joint production of Schoolcraft and the Rev. Dr. Boutwell, who were the first white men to seek this lake as the Mississippi's source.

Desiring to hail it at first sight with an appropriate title, Schoolcraft asked his companion for the Greek or Latin words meaning the true source of a river. Though somewhat rusty in his classics, the reverend explorer finally recalled the two Latin words veritas caput-truth head. These

were written down, the first and last syllables crossed out, and presto! the name Itasca. The former designation, Elk Lake, is now applied to the largest of the tributary lakes.

The single island in Itasca is called Schoolcraft, in honor of the pioneer explorer, who spent a few hours upon it in 1832. The Mississippi, a tiny stream ten to fifteen feet in width and one or two in depth, issues from the north end of the lake, and, though its general course to the Gulf is east of south, its direction at first is west of north! By a curious coincidence a tributary of the Red River of the North, rising but fifteen miles west of Itasca, also begins its long race to the sea by taking a direction diametrically opposite to the true one -flowing south instead of north!

The peril mentioned in my first paragraph assailed the forests about the headwaters. The fine stand of white and Norway pines that once covered that part of Minnesota is fast disappearing, and the great lumber companies are on the lookout for every acre that can be made to yield its growth of centuries for their enrichment. For convenience of transportation the lumbermen have followed in the main the natural waterways, floating their logs down-stream to some suitable point for