\ Departmental activities. 399 



-A 



DEPARTMENTAL ACTIVITIES 



March, 1921. 



(Note. — The work of the several Divisions and Schools of Agriculture covers a wide 

 range of agricultural industry in the Union, and we give hereunder notes and observations 

 from certain of them treating with matters of special interest coming under their purview 

 during the month. The object of these notes, which are not concerned with general routine 

 work, is to inform the farmer of such matters as are calculated to be of interest and helpful 

 to him at the present time. — Editor.; 



THe DIVISIONS. 



ENTOMOLOGY. 



Fruit Jh'etle. — The cuininon fruit beetle (Fachnoda impressa) is 

 one of the many, but probably the commonest, of the kinds of large, 

 clumsy beetles that eat into ripening fruit, in particular peaches, 

 throughout the greater part of the summer rainfall area of vSouth 

 Africa. They do not trouble commercial fruit orchards nearly so 

 much as they do the few fruit trees in farm and suburban gardens. 

 They also damage flowers and feed more or less on foliage. A short 

 bulletin on them (No. 8 of 1916) was published by the Department 

 ubout five years ago ; and the j)resent note is chiefly to acquaint 

 readers of the Journal with definite information on the life-historj^ 

 of the common species recently determined by the Entomologist for 

 Southern Rhodesia, and published in Bulletin No. 385 (February, 

 1921) of his department. The adult insect will probably be recalled 

 by most readers from the statement that it is nearly an inch long by 

 half as wide, has a glossy dark green back with yellow markings, and 

 is generally found along with others of its kind with its head buried 

 deep in the ripest peach. The mischief begins in November and is 

 kept up for two to three months. Day after day, if the weather is 

 fine, the beetle appears in the garden in the morning and leaves for 

 parts unknown in the late afternoon. It has long been suspected that 

 it bred chiefly in decaying matter amongst the bushes on stony kopjes, 

 as it is from such places that it appears generally to come. Now 

 the Rhodesian entomologists have traced the life-cycle. Tlie bulletin 

 referred to says: " Our earliest record of egg-laying is 2nd January. 

 . . . The eggs are laid singly in rotted kraal manure, or soil rich 

 in humus, at a depth of about one inch from the surface, 

 They are white. . . . The grubs feed on rotted vegetable matter, 

 including manure, and grow rapidly during the wet season. . . . 

 Larvae from eggs laid in January have constructed pupal cells in 

 August, the adults emerging from these in late November and 

 December. . . . Under entirely natural conditions, the insect must 

 breed mainly in collections of leaf mould and other detritus which 

 accumulates in sheltered situations, particularly on the slopes of 

 irregular rocky kopjes and outcrops where tree growth occurs. The 

 cattle kraal and manure heap may probably be regarded as largely 

 responsible for the abundance of these beetles in settled areas." 



