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the strait hr.s two islets in it, whereby the widest interspace is reduced 

 to five miles ; yet as on Savaii the 'beetle appeared in three villages, 

 it is just to infer thai more than one female insect had crossed the 

 strait, and that with the wind helping, the flight can be at least 

 five miles. However, abundant evidence shows that it is generally 

 much less, the insect seeking a palm tree to feed in, and finding it 

 usually near to its birth place. 



As to the extent of the damage done by the beetle about the 

 beginning of 1912, an official statement was made that one hundred 

 and fifty trees had then been destroyed and six to eight 

 thousand, or one-fifth of the others in the affected districts had 

 received damage enough to put their yielding back one or two 

 years. In April of that year, Jepson stated that about Apia and 

 Saleimoa — the worst localities — 75 per cent, of the coconut palms 

 showed signs of attack, 30 per cent, had had their yield reduced to a 

 great or small extent, and I to 2 per cent, had been killed (some 

 doubtless by the excessive zeal of the natives in their cutting out of 

 the beetles from the crowns). In other districts 25 per cent, of the 

 trees had been attacked and 10 per cent, had had their yield set back. 



The measures taken to cope with the beetle have been as fol- 

 lows. On the eighth of November, 1910, the Government of Samoa 

 issued a proclamation in vernacular to the effect that the beetles 

 and their grubs should be collected and, promising a reward of one mark 

 (36 cents) for every twenty beetles and the same for every fifty grubs. 

 Seventeen days later a law was promulgated stopping coconut 

 planting, ordering the cleaning up of all existing plantations, for- 

 bidding the using of coconut trunks for bridges and pig-styes, and 

 arranging for inspections. About £2,000 was the cost of this method 

 of dealing with the pest up to the end of January, 1912, and yet no 

 satisfactory impression had been made on its numbers. Therefore 

 on the first of February, 1912, it was made compulsory to search for 

 and destroy the insect. Following this there was issued on April 

 19th, 1912, a decree calling into being a commission with powers 

 to inspect and compel owners of coconuts to keep their estates 

 clean, and to remove structures made of coconut trunks, or standing 

 dead trees at the owner's expense. Then on the lOth of May, 1912, 

 appeared an order requiring all able-bodied persons in the affected 

 districts to turn out at six o'clock on every Wednesday to search for 

 beetles and grubs which were to be brought to the village headmen, 

 counted and destroyed by fire or hot water. Into this great holocaust 

 passed the grubs of beetles which happen to be similar to those of 

 Oryctes. Friederichs names them specifically ; but their number is 

 a matter for estimation. From the 1st of April, 1912, to the 31st of 

 March, 1913, roughly, ten million grubs and a quarter of a million 

 beetles were collected and killed on the island of Upolu ; allowing for 

 the grubs of the similar beetles, Friederichs puts down the Oryctes 

 larvae destroyed as six million and the beetles as two hundred thou- 

 sand — a nice little family originating in a few grubs imported in 1910 

 or possibly 1909. 



