53^ Journal of Agriculture. [lo Sept., 1908. 



they tumbled. Men with spades covered them over with earth, and 

 trampled them down when full. In 1883 the Government employed 

 2,631 men on the work of locust destruction, and 7,543 screens were in 

 use, most of which were in 50 yard lengths. In the following year 

 11,085 screens were in use, when the sum of money expended in this work 

 reached to ;^i4,746, and between the years 1881 and 1886 the sum of 

 ^^66,841 was spent on this work. 



In commenting on this expenditure, the Commissioner in his report 

 says : — 



" Large as this expenditure may seem, it is certain that it has already been 

 recovered by the island many times over, in the value of the crops saved. Assuming 

 that only y^ of the wheat and cotton, and ^ of the barley and oats would have been 

 destroyed, had no vigorous measures been taken to destroy the locusts, the loss to the 

 island would have amounted to ^^80,000. These figures are derived from the 

 ■estimated value of the crops based on the assessment of the tithes of the years 

 1882-83-84." 



P>om this date the Government had the locust plague well in hand, 

 and the operations were reduced and the expenditure fell to ;^3,598 in 

 1894, though it rose again to jQ-] .000 in 1896- At the present time the 

 only method adopted is the catching of the young hoppers with nets as 

 previously described, and the amount expended has dwindled, so that the 

 income tax has been relaxed. I am informed on very good authority, 

 however, that it must be also taken into consideration that, since the 

 British occupation, a very large area of land in which the locusts laid 

 their eggs, has been broken up for cultivation, so that they have been 

 driven into the barren lands where they can be much more easily dealt 

 with than in the first years of the crusade against them. 



On the loth May, accompanied by Mr. Bevan, I left Nicosia and 

 travelled in a coach and four horses across the island to the town of 

 Limasol, the centre and port for the wine and carob bean industry. This 

 was a distance of 55 miles ; the road was over rolling low chalk and marl 

 lands for the first ten miles, and then we were well into the carob and 

 ■olive tree country. The carob tree grows on very poor soil beyond the 

 area of irrigation, and is apparently as hardy and long-lived as the olive 

 tree; the trees are all grafted, and the beans are picked about the end 

 ■of June. The date upon which the picking is to commence is fixed 

 by the High Commissioner, on account of the fact that the ownership of 

 the trees is so complicated. Many of the trees belong to persons who do 

 not own the ground on which they grow, and if they were allowed to 

 gather the harvest at any time, there would be some trouble. In 1906 

 there were 44,965 tons of carob beans exported from Cyprus valued at 

 ^^157, 452; most of these are ground up and made into cattle foods, at 

 least half of the crop going to England. There is a wild species of this 

 tree growing upon the island, but the pods are of no value; by the natives 

 it is distinguished from the cultivated form by a Greek name, meaning 

 " Sent by God " otherwise, self-sown. I believe that at one time it 

 was proposed to plant the carob tree in the dry parts of Australia, and as 

 a tree capable of growing such immense crops of edible beans in our stock 

 country, I think the experiment could be revived ; young plants or seeds 

 -could be easily obtained in any quantity from the Forestry Department 

 of Cyprus. The olive trees in some parts of Cyprus are very old, so old 

 that in many places the central portion of the tree has rotted out, and 

 each angle has grown round, forming a bunch of three or four trees. 

 These are said to be in many instances four to five hundred years old ; 

 yet when we passed through them they were one mass of bloom, and as 



