INSECTS INJURIOUS TO AGRICULTURE 40 7 



pines; and these islands not being very far from Australia, Compere 

 started then for that archipelago. He only passed through there, and 

 then visited China and Japan without meeting the Ceratitis. From 

 Japan he went to the United States, where the fly in question does not 

 exist, but where in the collections and the laboratories he thought to 

 gain facts which should throw some light upon the problem of its 

 origin. From there he went to Spain, and there tried to learn from 

 what region this country received the fruit fly. He was not able, 

 however, to get any knowledge of this kind, but a large number of fruit 

 growers told him that they remembered the time when oranges, peaches 

 and other fruit were not damaged by the larva of this insect. Was 

 that not sufficient to confirm his opinion that the Ceratitis was a fly 

 not indigenous to Spain? 



After having traversed the south of France and Italy, he went back 

 again to Australia, and shortly afterwards departed for the Indies. In 

 the following month of September he landed at Bombay, traveling 

 through Hindostan, visiting the great markets as well as the orchards 

 and the principal fruit regions around Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and 

 Ceylon, studying the flies of the different species of fruits, as well as 

 the parasites living at their expense, wherever he could find them. 

 Then, always without having found the Ceratitis and finding nothing 

 which could serve him in the struggle against this insect, he returned 

 to Australia persuaded from certain indications he had collected in the 

 United States, that the original country of the celebrated dipterous 

 insect was Brazil. The seventh of January, 1904, he sailed, then, for 

 South America. Arrived in Brazil, he quickly ascertained that Cera- 

 titis capitata exists there in company with other flies injurious to fruit, 

 and at the same time he observed some Ichneumonids and some beetles 

 of the family Staphylinidse, which were carrying on a war against the 

 flies. If the Ceratitis causes, in general, only slight damage in Brazil, 

 it can be only owing to the presence of all these natural enemies which 

 hold it in check. And it, therefore, resulted that Brazil was the prom- 

 ised land for the fervent entomological traveler, the original home of 

 the Mediterranean fruit fly ! Arranging as ample a provision as pos- 

 sible for the parasites and predatory enemies of this insect, and ar- 

 ranging for their food for the time necessary for their journey, he then 

 returned to Australia. 



On his arrival, the Staphylinids were set at liberty in one of the 

 gardens of Perth, where the conditions seemed particularly favorable 

 to insure their subsistence. The pupae parasitized by the Hymenoptera 

 to the number of about 200 were placed in breeding jars, and as the 

 parasites emerged they were liberated in the orchards most infested 

 by the fruit fly. 



If we have told with some details this story of the journey around 



