Vedalia Beetles and Cyanide

Vedalia Beetles and Cyanide Back in Washington, Coquillett’s supervisor C.V. Riley was constantly “putting out fires” of complaints of farmers, vintners, dairymen, etc. nationwide with regard to injurious insects causing damage to crops, trees, vines, and domestic animals. One particular set of complaints was coming from [no surprise] California (and had been for a few years). Riley was obviously impressed (or at least satisfied) enough with Coquillett’s locust report to send him on a new mission. Orange groves were being subjected to damage by the introduced cottony-cushion scale. Coquillett was to join forces with exploratory entomologist Albert Koebele and find a solution to the problem. Riley had theorized that going to the home of the scale (Australia, where it was not causing the unchecked damage that it was in California) might prove successful in finding what insect or other organism was keeping populations of the scale in check or possibly could help eradicate it. In late 1885, the two began work. But, due to the diametrically opposed personalities of the two men, trouble soon ensued. Koebele discredited Coquillett’s work and the two feuded over who was in charge. Coincidentally or not, funds for Coquillett’s position ran out in the summer of 1886 and his employment with the U.S. Department of Agriculture was terminated. He was reemployed the next year, but the short time in between federal paychecks proved a useful period for Coquillett. Loss of employment with the federal government seemed not to deter the fervor Coquillett had for his work and, after meeting with two California agriculturalists who had begun the process, he began experiments with hydrocyanic-acid gas treatments for trees to rid them of scale insects. The gas was released under a tent covering a tree by mixing potassium cyanide with sulfuric acid 3. The previous methodology using this gas took many hours 3. This of course is the same concoction of chemicals prisons use for executing prisoners by lethal gas. for each tree and the method of mixing the two chemicals caused the gas to kill parts of the trees. By conducting trials with different dosages and tent designs, Coquillett was able to reduce the treatment to 15 minutes per tree. However, one day while experimenting with this gas treatment, Coquillett almost met an unfortunate fate. California State Quarantine Officer Alexander Craw (1899) related the story of he and Mr. J.R. Wolfskill (the latter the owner of the groves in Los Angeles where Coquillett was working; Fig. 7) going out into the groves to see how Coquillett was doing and saw evidence that he had left in a hurry. They finally tracked him down in his apartment (only a block away from the orchard—see below) and found out he had come into contact with the gas and feared for his life. He vowed never to work with the gas again. They finally convinced him to wear a suit for safety while using the gas and he reluctantly went back to work. Coquillett’s work on the gas treatment was a tremendous success and was publicized throughout the world as the method for getting rid of pestiferous insects, especially scales, in orchards. Riley was disappointed that the U.S. D.A. would not get credit for this but that did not stop him from publicizing it in many reports and newspaper articles, which made it seem as though the gas treatment discovery was the result of the U.S. D.A. Back in the employ of Riley a few months later, Coquillett returned to work with Koebele to solve the scale problem. Koebele went to Australia to find insects that might control the scale, and Coquillett would be the experimenter who received the shipments, maintained the colonies, and reared them in cages to see which worked best. Various parasites and predators were shipped and tested in cages and in the field, but one in particular became world famous: the Vedalia ladybird beetle, Rodolia cardinalis, a ladybird beetle as conspicuous as the cottonycushion scale on which it readily fed. The beetles multiplied rapidly, were easily transferred from grove to grove, and were voracious feeders. Within a year, the scale was virtually eliminated from the region and California’s citrus industry was saved. And, thus, more trouble ensued for Coquillett. Friction between state and federal officials over credit for the success resulted in a number of attacks on Coquillett and the federal government that were printed in the local papers. Coquillett remained quiet and did not respond to most of the disparaging remarks and personal attacks. In 1893, Riley had endured enough of the bad press the U.S. D.A. was getting in California and, after communicating the situation to the Secretary of Agriculture, the latter recalled both Koebele and Coquillett to Washington to separate them from California officials. Coquillett wrote to the Pacific Rural Press and they posted the letter from the Secretary of Agriculture. In that newspaper piece, Coquillett much lamented his having to go: “I regret very much the necessity that bids me leave this interesting field of labor where the principal work of my life thus far has been wrought, and where many pleasant friendships have been formed. My relations with the honest soiltillers have been of the most agreeable kind, and I need hardly assure them that in whatever field I may be called upon to labor in the future, I carry with me the most pleasant remembrances of them and the good people of this peerless State—California.” (Anonymous 1893a: 264). The reaction to the recall by growers in California was disappointment verging on outrage at State officials. The Pomological Society and Farmers’ Institute of Southern California at their joint 1893 convention in Ontario, California went so far as to sign the following resolution: “Whereas, the action of the National Department of Agriculture in withdrawing the two entomologists stationed in California, namely Professor D.W. Coquillett at Los Angeles and Professor Albert Koebele at Alameda, is due solely to the hostile attitude of the State Board of Horticulture, and particularly its secretary and president, to the authorities at Washington by persistently libeling Professors C.V. Riley and D.W. Coquillett and by further seeking to secure the discharge of the former entomologist of the department; Therefore, be it resolved by the Pomological Society and Farmers’ Institute of Southern California, in joint convention assembled, November 2 and 3, 1893, in the city of Ontario, that the said State Board of Horticulture in no way represents the fruit-growers in their attacks upon Professors Riley and Coquillett. To the contrary, this convention deeply regrets the course pursued by the said State Board of Horticulture and strongly condemns it for robbing the great industry of horticulture of valuable aid at Washington.” Anonymous (1893b: 2). Despite the apologies from their grower friends, the recall was a done deal, but the reactions to the recall by the two field agents were quite different from one another. Koebele had had enough of Riley and Washington and took a job in Hawaii working as exploratory entomologist for the new provisional government there; and eventually for R.C.L. Perkins and the Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association; and Coquillett, unsure of his future, moved to Washington to continue his employment with the U.S. D.A. Only after he was “safely” back in D.C. did Coquillett respond to the newspaper attacks on him (Coquillett 1893i). Coquillett never returned to California, but during his stay there he had purchased land, which he apparently kept until his death. While working for the U.S. D.A., he resided at 236 Winston Street (a building of small apartments), a few blocks away from the main rail station near downtown Los Angeles. That location no doubt allowed him a convenient hub of operations when he needed to travel to the various places that Riley would send him, but it was also only a block away from the Wolfskill orange groves where he developed the procedure for hydrocyanic gas to fumigate orange trees and where he would test the Vedalia beetle.

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