REPORT ON ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
237 
parafTin. Where the hoppers occur in open desert, they can he driven into trendies, hut 
when among scrub, at tlie slightest alarm they take refuge in the hushes. 
Attempts were made during IDOfi to infect living locusts with a fungus that had been 
found growing on the bodies of dead locusts at Suakin in the previous year,' and which 
during the interval had been cultivated on agar slope. In every case these attempts were 
unsuccessful, and in view of this the following extracts and notes from an article on 
the South African Locust Fungus — Empusa. (ji'i/lU — by Mr. I. B. Pole Evans, jmhlished in 
the Transvaal Agricultural Jounial of July, 1907, may be of interest. 
“ Diseased locusts were first noticed in Natal and the Transvaal in the year 1895. 
The Natal specimens were examined hy Mr. Medley Wood and found to he infected with a 
fungus helonging to the Entoiiuiphthorea. Specimens were also sent to the British Museum 
and Mr. Medley Woods’ determination confirmed. The following year, outbreaks of locust 
disease were again observed in Natal and several parts of Cape Colony. The accounts of 
the disease from both Colonies agree in the fact that the dying insects always betook 
themselves to the tops of the grasses and other herbage, where they remained clinging to 
their posts long after death. 
“ Attempts at the cultivation of this fungus were made by Doctors Ediugton and Black 
at the Grahamstown Bacteriological Institute. They succeeded in growing a fungus on a 
large scale, which was afterwards distributed among agriculturists in order that they might 
infect with disease the swarms of locusts whenever they occurred. This fungus, however, 
has proved to be a saprophyte (a Mucor), and not the parasite Empusa grylU, which is the 
main cause of the mortality that occurs from time to time amongst locusts in South Africa, 
when a fungus agent is at work. 
“ Empusa grylli is entirely dependent for its growth on the living tissues of its host 
and cannot be cultivated in artificial media. It is difficult to see, therefore, how it can be 
put to any economic use.” 
The employment of destructive agents is the method that will probably prove to be 
best suited to the Sudan, and is the method chiefly in vogue in Natal and the Transvaal. 
The destructive agent usually employed is arsenic in the form of arsenite of soda. A liquid 
containing this compound is sprayed over the herbage on which the locusts are feeding, 
with the result that the insects are poisoned. 
Another method is to lay about poisoned baits, while a third is to spray the locusts 
themselves with what are known as “ contact ” sprays — non-poisonous liquids that kill hy 
contact. A drawback to this is that a very much larger quantity of spray is required than 
is the case when a poisonous spray is employed. 
The sum of £E 700 has been granted by the Government with which to make trials of 
these methods during the coming seascm. These trials will be restricted to one province — 
the Province of Berber — but should they prove successful, a larger sum will he applied for 
in order that a general effort may be made to control the locusts throughout the Sudan in 
the future. 
Natural enemies . — Locust swarms are invariably preyed upon by numbers of birds, 
animals and insects, which do a great deal towards lessening their numbers. 
Among the insects, beneficial in this way, noticed during 1907, was the larva of one 
of the Cantluirididcc, or blister beetles. At Kalakla, nearly 50 per cent, of the egg hatches 
of the yellow locust contained these larvae. 
The larva of the blister beetle, Epicauta vittata, lias been recorded by liiley- to feed on 
the eggs of North American locusts of the genus Calopfenus in a similar way. 
’ J-hic Second Hepurt, Wellcome Research Lahor.atories, 19(J0, p. 50. 
* Report United States Entoinolo^:y Coinnus.sion, i. 1878, p. *297. 
'I'he locust 
fungus 
Grant for 
locust 
destruction 
