Departmental activities. 401 



area, and the spraying' would take about three and a half houis with 

 a knapsack pump. After the plants have flowered, ahout 50 per cent, 

 more material may be necessary for the spraying-. For further 

 information see article in the January, 1921, Journal. 



Locusts. — The outbreaks of locusts (Locusta pardalina) in the 

 Cape Province increased greatly in gravity during March. There 

 have been unsubstantiated rumours of the migration into the Karroo 

 of a swarm or swarms of flyers from Gordonia, but so far as is known 

 to the division the present outbreaks are due solely to the spontaneous 

 breeding-up of the insect in the now infested reg-ion, following on 

 the break-up of the drought. Owing to jSTovember rains, the pest 

 multiplied extensively along the upper reaches of the Sundays River 

 and its tributaries ; and some swarms of flyers, which formed there 

 from voetgangers that escaped poisoning, moved into other districts 

 early in February and have contributed to the trouble now (4th April) 

 being experienced. But the trouble was brewing anyhow, and it 

 seems doubtful if it has been much intensified in any district by the 

 addition of swarms of flyers from other districts. There was not a single 

 report to the division of any laying of eggs, or even of a swarm of 

 flyers, last season ; but the division was highly suspicious that serious 

 trouble was coming in the part of the Karroo where the outbreaks 

 are now most extensive, owing to an officer specially sent there in 

 May last to make observations and inquiries finding that scattered 

 flyers were very numerous in the veld. In some of the localities 

 where the pest is being fought the voetgangers are in compact swarms, 

 as is the rule in great visitations of the plague ; but in many localities 

 they are in such open formation, a small cluster sleeping in almost 

 every bush for miles at a stretch, that effective poisoning 

 is almost impossible. The whole infested area is sparsely 

 populated pastoral country, with little of any of the farms under 

 cultivation. Farms of upwards of 20,000 acres, with only one white 

 family and only a few native servants, are numerous ; and it has to 

 be expected that under such conditions some swarms of voetgangers 

 escape detection even when the official locust officers are most vigilant 

 and the farmers not unwilling to carry out their duty, under the law, 

 of destroying the swarms. 



The March outbreaks were most severe in the Murraysburg and 

 Beaufort West districts, but also quite bad in Victoria West, 

 Carnarvon, Williston, Prince Albert, Willowmore, Aberdeen, and 

 -Fansenville. The other present infested districts include Laingsburg, 

 Britstown, Calvinia, Prieska, Kenhardt, and Namaqualand. Small 

 outbreaks, the most northern that have come to light this season, are 

 reported near Pella, both on the Union and South- Western Protec- 

 torate sides of the Orange Biver. A small outbreak also occurred 

 during the month in the Cradock district, and a more serious one 

 in the Middelburg district, far to the east of the main outbreaks. 

 The Middelburg outbreak is close to the Doornberg, a part of the 

 district in which locusts incline to breed up and where swarms were 

 particularly expected to appear when the drought broke. In the 

 middle of the month a Johannesburg newspaper published a tele- 

 graphic dispatch from its East London correspondent to the effect that 

 winged locusts had just been blown there in numbers by a heavy 

 north-west wind. There may have been no mistake, but the magis- 

 trate, when approacliod by the division, was unable to get the report 



