



242 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 18&1. 



affinities we believe that it spends the whole of its life upon the 

 leaves of rice and other grasses, and that it passes through a number 

 of generations in the year. The keeping down therefore of grasses 

 around the rice-fields would seem in this case too to be desirable. 



The fourth slide shows a Buprested beetle which I reared last rains 

 from cotton stalks sent to me from Nagpur, where the insect was 

 said to have been doing some damage to country varieties of cotton 

 by tunnelling into the stalks, the American varieties escaping. 



The fifth and last slide shows an insect which was sent to me by 

 your Society last rains. It is supposed to have been responsible for 

 the indigo blight of last year, which was estimated to have destroyed 

 a third of the indigo crop. A s yet however our information on the 

 subject is very imperfect, and I only show you the insect on account 

 of the very large amount of damage attributed to it. 



THE LOCUST OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 



ACR1DIUM PEREGRINUM. 

 {With a plate.) 

 In the summer of 1889, when the locust Acridium peregrinum began to appear 



n .. . in North-Western India, the Trustees of the Indian 



Preliminary. 



Museum undertook, at the request of the Secretary 

 to the Government of India, in the Revenue and Agricultural Department, to 

 collect information and to furnish a report upon the subject. With this end a 

 preliminary note was issued showing briefly how the question then stood, and 

 indicating the points upon which further information was required. Help was 

 freely afforded on all sides, both by the Government and also by private individuals, 

 a large number of reports and specimens were received ; and, in the beginning of 

 the present year, a second note was issued showing the progress made in the 

 investigation. Since then the locust plague has continued unabated, and, though 

 much still remains to be ascertained, it is thought advisable to issue the report, in 

 order to bring the information up to date and to indicate the points which are still 

 uncertain, this being the more necessary as the inquiry has shown that the plapue 

 has extended over a very much wider area than was at first supposed, — Persia, 

 Baluchistan, and probably South Afghanistan and Arabia being implicated, as well 

 as North- Western India, — while the Natural History of the insect has proved to 

 be very much less simple, when it occurs over this vast area than when it occurs 

 in the regions of Northern Africa, where it has long been studied by French 

 entomologists. 



