MISCELLANEOUS. ]87 



have now invaded, there is every probability thai they will commence ovipositing 

 very much earlier than this (Lite. It is impossible to predict the date with any 

 degree of certainty, hut March ami April are likely, at least in many cases, to see 

 a large number of eggs are deposited. After the eggs are deposited the parent 

 locusts will soon die off and the fate of the young locusts will, to a great extent' 

 depend on the atmospheric conditions that obtain. They will undoubtedly be less 

 healthy than their parents, and will probably be afflicted by all manner of diseases 

 and parasites, whose history it will be most interesting and instructive to observe. 

 If the year is an exceptionally dry one, they may succeed iu passing through their 

 various stages ia numbers sufficiently vast to do an indefinite amount of injury 

 both in their larval, and winged stages, but under ordinary condition it is to be 

 expected that the vast bulk of them will die off before acquiring wings 

 though injury may be done by them, in their earlier wingless condition. 



An account of the remedies applicable to these locusts was given in the first 

 note, and subsequent enquiry has only confirmed the statement there made that 

 the best time to attack them is in the wingless condition, in which they emerge 

 from the eggs, and long before they have acquired wings. They are then little 

 black, helpless creatures which band themselves together and can readily be driven 

 like sheep— into pits, or any other kind of trap prepared to receive them. The 

 Cyprus system of screens and pits (described in the first note), could probably be 

 utilised with advantage, but the prospects of serious injury from the locusts are 

 not sufficiently alarming to make it probable that it will be considered advisable 

 to go to any very considerable expense in introducing apparatus of the kind. 



Amongst the points to which the writer would now direct attention, and upon 

 which he will be grateful for any information, are the following : — 



(1) the ovipositing which is likely to take place within the next one or two 

 months ; 



(2) the diseases, parasites, and other foes, to whose inroads the locusts will 



now be especially exposed ; 



(3) any emigration of fresh flights from Western Rajputana, or Baluchis- 



tan or the Suliman range. 



With regard to No. 2 very little is at present known in India. The question of 

 disease is very intimately connected with climatic conditions, for unfavourable, and 

 especially wet, weather undoubtedly tends to produce an unhealthy condition in 

 the locust. In the Bombay Presidency in 1883, however, the general debility 

 observed ia the locusts would seem to point to some specific disease, and the 

 discoveries made of late years concerning contagious diseases amongst insects, due 

 to the growth of low vegetable organisms in their tissues, render it extremely 

 probable that the excessive mortality amongst the locusts will be due largely to 

 some such cause. In support of this theory, besides instancing such well known 

 insect diseases as pebrine, and muscardine, which are often most fatal to silkworms 



