KEPORT ON ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
203 
Now, if these infested melons, instead of being allowed to rot on the ground, were 
carefully collected and either burnt or deeply buried, the maggots within them would never 
he able to complete their life-cycle. 
While it is not possible to control all insect pests with this ease, yet it is (juite true that 
by destroying all diseased and refuse vegetation, and removing all volunteer plant growths, 
the majority of them can to a lai’ge extent be kept in check. 
If once the native could be convinced of the benefits that accrue from clean cultivation 
and from adopting preventive and remedial measures for insect pests, I believe that 
he might he prevailed upon to give the matter some consideration. If this is ever to be 
accomplished I think it will be bj^ the force of example. When he sees land, farmed by 
Europeans, yielding far heavier and better crops than he can grow by his present methods, 
there is every likelihood of his arriving at the conclusion that clean cultivation pays. 
Unfortunately, few insect pests can be really controlled except by the continued and 
concerted efforts of all the farmers in the district, and if one man is persuaded to carry 
out some proposal, he is disheartened if, as is most probable, it does not meet with entire 
success. 
The case of the cotton boll-worm —Enrias insulana —is a good illustration of this. No 
single remedy has yet been devised for this pest, but, by collecting infested shoots while the 
plants are young, burning the remnants of the crop after the cotton has been gathered, 
destroying all volunteer cotton plants that may be growing in the vicinity, and by 
making use of trap crops, much good results. 
The control of pests, such as locusts, which range over a large area of land, is clearly a 
matter to be undertaken by the Government, as individual effort, in a thinly-populated 
country such as the Sudan, is of little avail. I am glad to be able to state that the sum of 
£E 700 has been granted with which to carry out experiments in this direction during the 
coming season, and if these experiments meet with success there is reason to hope that 
larger sums will be forthcoming in the future. 
It is difficult to estimate the extent of the losses suffered by agriculturists in this 
country from insect pests, but undoubtedly they are very considerable. The value of crops 
destroyed by locusts alone in the province of Berber during the year 1906 is said to have 
been JBE .30,000. 
A great deal might be done to prevent the jmarly outbreaks of fever that occur among 
the natives living on the banks of the Nile in the Northern Sudan during the winter. 
These are due to the pools which ai'e left in the banks and khors by the falling river and 
which constitute breeding places for the malaria-carrying mosquito, Fyretophnnut cos^tnlis. 
The cold weather bringing out the fever in those natives who have suffered from it in 
previous years, this mosquito is enabled to spread it. Very little care would be necessary 
in most places to keep these pools paraffined, and thus to render them useless as nurseries 
for mosquitoes. 
The occurrence of fever among natives employed on large artificially irrigated estates, 
such as the one belonging to the Sudan Exploration Plantation Syndicate, Ltd., at 
Zeidab, however, requires more serious consideration. Very great and continual care is 
necessary, under these circumstances, to keep the smaller canals and gadwals free from 
mosquito larva3, and consequently the tendency, in some cases, has been to abandon the 
attempt as hopeless. This way of treating the matter cannot be too strongly condenmed. 
It may not be possible to entirely suppress the mosquitoes under these conditions, but the 
least that those in charge ought to do is to strive their utmost to keep them in check, and 
so to lessen, as far as they can, the ravages of malaria. 
Clram for 
locust 
destruction 
Losses due to 
locusts 
Malaria at 
Zeidab 
