FIGHTING THE INSECTS i 



eral Funston at once sent aid from his Quartermaster's Depart- 

 ment. Eventually Herrera returned to Mexico City, and under 

 the following administration resumed his work and finally or- 

 ganized a Department of Biological Studies. 



Years later destructive locusts invaded some of the south- 

 eastern states of Mexico and played havoc with the crops. A 

 competent German, Dr. Alfonso Dampf, who had done work in 

 the tropics, was engaged to investigate this matter, and eventu- 

 ally was made Chief of the Department of Research and Pest 

 Control in the Federal Office of Agricultural Defense. 



In spite of Mexican internal troubles, experts from the United 

 States have been sent down there on entomological problems, 

 and some have been stationed there for a long time. I remember 

 that at one time we had a laboratory in the so-called Lagunas 

 district, and a cheerful photograph that one of the men sent 

 me showed the body of a revolutionista hanging from a tree 

 immediately in front of the laboratory entrance. Under the pres- 

 ent government (this is written in 1931) cooperative work is 

 being carried on in a mutually helpful and very cordial way be- 

 tween Mexico and the United States. A competent laboratory 

 has been furnished by the Mexican government in the federal 

 district and it is manned by American experts. Its purpose is 

 largely to study the so-called "fruit flies," and its necessity is 

 emphasized by a serious outbreak of one of these flies in the new 

 citrus orchards on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, and by 

 the remarkable outbreak of the Mediterranean Fruit Fly in 

 Florida in the late winter and spring of 1929. 



Mexico is a wonderful country, and she has had some wonder- 

 ful men. I remember Sefior Limantour when he was Secretario 

 de Fomento, a cultivated, broad-minded statesman of whom any 

 country might be proud. And I remember my friends among 



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