prksident's address. 13 



boll weevil is now causing a damage in the United States, in each 

 year, of at least 25,000,000 dollars (£5,000,000). The indications 

 are that this amount will continue to be lost for some time on 

 account of the difficulties in control, which will be encountered 

 in the Mississippi valley." The millions of beetles deposit their 

 eggs on the squares of the immature boll, the larvae feeding in the 

 tissue, causing each infested boll to drop off without producing a 

 boll of cotton. 



Grape-vine Louse (Phylloxera vastatrix). — This under- 

 ground, root-destroying aphis was first discovered upon the vines 

 in France, in 1863. Accidentally introduced with vines from 

 North America, within ten years it had utterly destroyed 250,000 

 acres of vines. In 1896, it was estimated that this almost micro- 

 scopic, yellow aphis had cost France £100,000,000, and had spread 

 through the vineyards of the world in thirty-three years, reaching 

 Australia in 1875. In the Bordeaux Trade Report for 1896, it 

 was stated that, in the last thirteen years (1879-1892), the wine- 

 production of France had decreased by 375,000,000 gallons. 

 Signoret, in his essay upon this insect, said " The peasant of the 

 Midi now pays eight sous for the wine he had previously bought 

 for three sous." 



S u g a r-c ane Beetl e{Lepidoderma alhohirtum). — The large, 

 white grub of this lamellicorn beetle destroys the roots of the 

 growing sugar-cane in the sugar-plantations of all Northern 

 Queensland. The planters have formed a special beetle-fund, 

 paying collectors from 6d. to 2s. per quart of beetles. In 1909, 

 the beetles were so abundant and the price so good, that numbers 

 of men working on the plantations threw up their work in the 

 mills and canefields around Cairns, forming beetle-camps and 

 collecting the beetles. In the 1908-1909 season, the Colonial 

 Sugar Company paid away nearly £3,000, buying 31 tons of them, 

 estimated to contain 16,000,000 beetles, all of which were taken 

 on the six northern plantations. 



Sugar-cane Weevil {Sphenophorus ohscurus). — This 

 beetle, though not a pest in Australia, is yet as serious a pest in 

 the great sugar-cane plantations of Hawaii and Fiji as the other 

 species is in Queensland. Unlike the latter, they deposit their 



