WHOLE VOL. APPLIED ENTOMOLOGY HOWARD 439 



Mr. Wolcott also published, in the Bulletin of Entomological Re- 

 search of London '(Vol. 20, Part 2, August, 1929), an excellent article 

 entitled " The Status of Economic Entomology in Peru." In this 

 paper he describes in a general way the topography and meteoro- 

 logical conditions of the different parts of the country and the general 

 distribution of the important crops. He shows that Doctor Town- 

 send's original journey to Peru in 1909 was made possible by a strong 

 organization of the larger land holders in Piura for the purpose of 

 making recommendations concerning the common white scale (Hemi- 

 ch'ionaspis minor, Maskell) which was considered to be the most 

 serious pest affecting cotton. Mr. Wolcott also mentions other cotton 

 enemies, and states that for many years the use of arsenicals for 

 killing the leaf-worms has been in practice in Peru but only by means 

 of hand-operated spray pumps even on the largest plantations. He 

 shows further that the cotton growers' association of the Canete 

 Valley brought Dr. W. E. Hinds, the Entomologist of the Louisiana 

 Experiment Station, to Peru in 1925. Doctor Hinds was there for a 

 few months only, yet, according to Mr. Wolcott, his influence was 

 very great. He suggested dusting the poison on the cotton plants and 

 was largely instrumental in having the airplane application of calcium 

 arsenate widely adopted. It is stated that the Huff-Daland Company 

 went down there in 1926 and during the first season dusted approxi- 

 mately 40,000 acres, doubling this area the next season with no 

 larger personnel and only one additional airplane. Mr. Wolcott con- 

 siders that airplane dusting is already a standardized commercial 

 practice in Peru, " giving practically perfect results in the control of 

 the leaf-caterpillars." He states that whereas in many cases four or 

 five applications of poison by hand had been needed, one or two by 

 airplane were found ample and the costs have been halved. 



Mr. Wolcott's paper goes further, and contains many interesting 

 statements. So it appears that Peru is on the way to an appreciation 

 of the value of economic entomology and quite in the mood to follow 

 up the work of Townsend, Hinds, and Wolcott. 



In 1926 O. B. G. Tafur published at Lima an article on cultivation 

 of cotton in the department of Lambayeque, giving some account of 

 a weevil congeneric with the Mexican cotton boll weevil. The species 

 is Anthouonius vestitiis. In the same year Doctor Townsend published 

 a report on the cotton region of Iquitos, dealing with several species 

 of insects affecting cotton. In 1927 Doctor Townsend published on 

 the so-called white scale (Pinnaspis minor), a pest of cotton in some 

 parts of Peru where there is an extreme drought in the hot season. 



