Section C— BACTERIOLOGY, BOTANY, ZOOLOGY, 

 AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY, PHYSIOLOGY, HY- 

 GIENE AND SANITARY SCIENCE. 



President of the Section : C. P. Lounsbury, B.Sc. F.E.S. 



WEDNESDAY, JULY 7. 



In the unavoidable absence from South Africa of the 

 President, the following address, prepared by liim for delivery, 

 was read by Mr. C. K. Brain: — 



SOME PHASES OF THE LOCUST PROBLEM. 



Before proceeding to the subject of my address, I feel 

 that an explanation and an apology for my personal absence are 

 due to the members attending Section C. When the Council 

 of the Association was pleased in Alarch to offer me the presi- 

 dency of the Section for the current session, I quite expected 

 to be able to fulfil the functions of the office, and, sensible of 

 the honour conferred on me, I gratefully accepted. It was not 

 until some weeks later that I found it would be impracticable 

 for me to attend the session ; but when I sought to withdraw 

 from the presidency, your secretary was good enough to ask 

 me to retain the position and to leave my address to be read 

 in my name. I sincerely regret having to miss the pleasure 

 of being with you. 



A presidential address is generally supposed, I believe, to 

 give a review of the progress made in the arts and sciences 

 encompassed by the section ; and in following the lead of some 

 of my predecessors in departing from this time-honoured 

 custom, I crave the indulgence of the meeting. So many and 

 so varied are the subjects covered by Section C, that only a man 

 with enclycop^edic knowledge could hope even to touch upon 

 all of them satisfactorily. Keenly conscious of my limitations. 

 I have chosen to address you on locusts, a subject that, I think, 

 has the merit of general interest in this country. After all, I 

 think I could show you that locusts, to some degree, concern all 

 of the eight sciences comprised in the section. A connection 

 with bacteriology, for instance, is evident inasmuch as the use 

 of bacterial diseases for the decimation of locusts has been 

 widely advocated; cultures of one organism (Coccobacillus 

 acridiontm d'Hcrcllc) for the purpose are now obtainable at the 

 Pasteur Institute in Paris. Any link with sanitary science is 

 less apparent, but now and again our town engineers are called 

 upon to guard reservoirs and streams against pollution by the 

 insects, and the time has been even at Cape Town when decaying 

 myriads of locusts have been thrown back by the sea greatly to 

 the distress of the dwellers in the mother city of our Association. 



