90 



THE AORICOLTURAL NEWS. 



March 16, 1912. 





fN rCT f ITES. 



THB^ SUU -0/^ B^ BEETLE IN 



In a recent nuiiiu.i of tLt in Icultural News (see Vol. 

 X, p. 314) * short tvii' ^lipeuif^i ^.n the subject of anew 

 sugar-cane pest in ^i;)iiwtius. 'his pest was the larva of 

 a hardback beetle v. i'uiv 41301 ni-iit its appearance in that 

 island, and had causei) «t cou.sidei;ii)ie amount of loss by the 

 injuries inflicted on ibe growing cane. 



Since the time bat this beetle was first reported, it has 

 attracted attention ^xot all pf'ts ui the sugar-growing world, 

 on account of the vt iv Serious i.utnre of the damage done by 

 it, and also becaust of the *»• i th; t it is seemingly a new 

 form, certainly new to Mauiiins, and, up to the present 

 time, apparently not "J^vitified in any published account of 

 Jhe insect. 



The enormous MUtibers in which these insects have 

 occurred are shown i;i [ ■ o letters viiich have been received by 

 the Imperial Commisr :■ of .V ;i culture from a correspond- 

 ent in Mauritius. In "f the^f Jated December 15, 1911, 

 it was stated that th Uilt b- ns were being captured in 

 large numbers, over .'j'^. 000 h. mg been taken in a single 

 night; a postscript ai*^ ' on the i .^t.h of the month gives the 

 record of 1,372,000 bt es taken in one night. 



The method ado: '1 for tb- capture of the beetles is 

 ingenious. This work ione by East Indians — men, women 

 and children — who st ■ u small iiranches of trees into the 

 "round, in fields wher •\e insects are known to abound. The 

 branches, having the ■ , k arance of small shrubs, are placed 

 irregularly, at no fixee istance apart; this may vary from 15 

 to 50 feet. At dusk. •• insects come out of the ground and 

 settle on the branches^ Mom whii h they are collected by the 

 Indians, who are pr<. ded with small hand lamps. The 

 insects are taken to th tficer in (Large of the work, and are 

 paid for at a given pi i e per thousand. 



In another lettei Tom the same correspondent, under 

 date of December 28. 1911, the Imperial Commissioner was 

 informed that the ree Hi capture for the season amounted 

 to nearly 3,000,000 i >' the beetles in one night, while the 

 total number for the months of November and December 

 exceeded 25,000,000. During the latter part of December, 

 however, there was a decided falling oflF in the number of 

 insects taken, the last .-ures received being 275,000, for one 

 night near the end of e month. 



It would appeal m the information received that the 

 collecting of the adr espei-ially towards the end of the 

 year, was the contr-^' hod on which the greatest depend- 



ence was placed; al I -^h it i.s possible that experiments 

 with other methods i have been under progress, and will 

 be reported upon lat^' 



A question of v. > _;reat interest in connexion with the 

 ontbreak o. the beet i < Mauritius is that of its identity, 



relationship and original home. There aeems to be no doubt 

 that it is a recently introduced form in Mauritius, and the- 

 fact that it occurs in the vicinity of the Gardens at Pample- 

 mousses, gives rise to the surmise that it may have been 

 introduced among plants imported for the gardens. 



A letter in the Weil India Committee Circular for 

 December 5 last suggests a relationship between the Mauri- 

 tius beetle, and the Lachnosterna beetle in Porto Itico and 

 Cuba. 



In the Agrindtural'Newa for February 17, 1912 (Vol. 

 XI, p. 58) there appeared an article on The New Zealand 

 Grass Grub, in which mention was made of several root-eating, 

 grubs, and of the general relationships between them. In the- 

 first of the letters quoted above the correspondent refers to- 

 the article in the Agricultural News (Vol IX, p, 186) 

 entitled The Hardback Beetle, stating that the brown hard- 

 back which is mentioned there seems to be very similar to^ 

 if not the same ijs, the beetle causing so much injury in 

 Mauritius. This is the brown hardback which has often 

 been referred to in publications of the Imperial Department 

 of Agriculture as Ci/clocephala sp. 



At the West Indian Agricultural Conference in Trinidad, 

 one of the delegates was Mr. Guy A. K. Marshall, Scientific 

 Secretary to the African Entomological Research Committee. 

 Mr. Marshall, who has made a special study of Coleoptera, 

 brought with him to the West Indies specimens of the Mauri- 

 tius beetle which he had received from the island. These 

 specimens were compared with hardbacks in the collection 

 of the Imperial Department of Agriculture, when it was 

 found that the sag£ir-t;ane pest of Mauritius is the same as 

 the common brown hardback in Barbados, but the examina- 

 tion showed that the brown hardbacks from other islands- 

 belong to the geaus Cyclocephala, while the Barbados species 

 is distinct. - 



Mr. Marshall was able to state that the sugar-cane pest 

 of Matiritius has been described under the name of Phytalus: 

 smitki. Arrow, and that the Barbados brown hardback 

 is the same species. The published description in which this 

 name is used has not yet been received, although it may have 

 appeared before thjs time. 



It is naturally of considerable interest that, while the 

 brown hardback in Barbados is not recognized as being of 

 any importance as a pest in that island, in another part of 

 the world the same species should develop to such enormous 

 numbers and should become a pest of such great economic 

 importance. 



It is well known that insects are much more serious pests 

 when introduced into a new locality than in their native homes, 

 and this is generally attributed to the fact that in the former 

 of these situations they are not checked by the activities of 

 their natural enemies, which occur in their native habitat. 

 If Barbados, of another West Indian island, is the native- 

 home of this pest, it would seem probable that there must 

 be some very efficient natural enemy, which is able to control 

 it. Careful and systematic observations of the natural 

 enemies of the hardback beetles throughout the West Indies 

 might result in the discovery of the natural enemies which 

 are responsible for keeping these insects reduced to compara- 

 tively insignificant numbers. 



In regard to tJhe occurrence of the leaf-blister mite {Eri- 

 ophyes fiossypii) as a pest of cotton in the West Indies, 

 Barbados has, so far, been regarded as free from the presence 

 of this enemy of the cotton planter. It has, however, been 

 found quite recency in several cotton fields in that island. . 



