i8i 



Friederichs further gives the following figures to show that the 

 traps are efficient for catching the male insects as well as the 

 female : — out of 1,000 insects taken. 566 were females and 434 males. 



Of the lessons to be learned from this Samoa outbreak, the 

 outstanding one is that the beetle is enormously prolific when un- 

 checked. Regretfully we learn too that man cannot keep it down, 

 for it has gained ground in spite of strenuous direct efforts against 

 it ; it ought probably to be attacked through its natural enemies — 

 parasitic ichneumon flies and Tachinid flies. These, however, will 

 never serve instead of cleanliness about the plantations and the 

 removal of that in which the grubs prefer to mature. 



In German East Africa the method of collecting the grubs and 

 beetles by paying so much for them was adopted some years ago. 



It seems that there planters had put out coconuts on virgin forest 

 soil which was full of grubs living in rotten wood in or on the soil, 

 and so they had courted the beetle. At any rate its abundance 

 alarmed them and rewards were offered for the collection of the grubs 

 and beetles. Preuss (Der Troiienpflanzer, xv. 1911, p. 7i), says that 

 in October, 1899, on the Muea Plantation of the German East Africa 

 Company 140,000 were taken from the ground at a fixed sum ; ... in 

 Dar-es-Salam in June, 1907, as the result of an offer of a sum for 

 each grub . . . there was a grub-fever among the natives and within 

 a few days 25,000 to 30,000 were collected and destroyed. 



In the region of the natural distribution of the Rhinoceros 

 beetle, viz , India to the Philippine islands, a not inconsiderable 

 amount of attention has lately been directed to the damage done by 

 it in various quarters, not so much because of any outbreaks as 

 because Economic Entomology has come to the front. Messrs. J. 

 McKenna and K. D. Shroff do indeed claim that it has lately invaded 

 Tenasserim (Bulletin No. 4 of the Department of Agriculture, Burma, 

 1910, p. 3), but it is hard to believe that this should have been the 

 case ; rather is it more likely that the inert ase of industries which 

 leave vegetable refuse about, such as saw milling, are responsible for 

 an increase in the numbers of the insect. This might particularly 

 be the case about Rangoon, where it was said that so abundant had 

 the beetle become in, and from 1907 that the very existence of palms 

 in the neighbourhood was threatened. 



The laying out of new coconut plantations in Ceylon by European 

 planters brought the beetle to notice through the colony, but espe- 

 cially in the Batticaloa District, where the new plantations 

 chiefiy were : and 1903 saw an agitation for legislation against those 

 who allow it to mature. 



