lo Sept., 1908.] Insect Pests in Foreign Lauds. 54i 



the oranges from this place took the first prize in London at the Show. 

 Though JNIr. Saracomnos told me that fruit fly was a common pest 

 in these orchards, the growers did not seem to think mucli about it. The 

 " disease '' as they call it, that did an immense amount of damage to 

 their trees, and is still very bad, is our common red scale {Aspidiotus 

 auranti). This scale is very common all over the Cyprus gardens, 

 attacking roses, and I even found it on wattles. They are now painting 

 che tree trunks with lime wash, and they do a little spraying after seeing 

 the results of experiments by the Department of Agriculture; but, as one 

 orchardist said, " The Good God sent it, He will take it away," and 

 this is the attitude of both Greek and Turk in the East. In 1906, 

 8,431,217 oranges, valued at ^6,056, were exported from Cyprus, chiefly 

 to Egypt, while in the same year 42.374 cwts. of pomegranates, valued 

 at ;^8,io7, were exported. 



A good many mulberries are grown in some districts and the Depart- 

 ment has encouraged the growing of silkworms by seeing that all the seed 

 (eggs) imported is pure ; most of this is sold in the cocoon, but a certain 

 amount is made into native silk with hand looms in Nicosia. 



I left Cyprus for Port Said at midnight on the 15th and reached there 

 early on the 17th, catching the train to Cairo at 8 a.m. and reaching the 

 latter place at 2 p.m. The next morning I went to the offices 

 of the Khedivial Agricultural Society, where I met Mr. ¥ . C. Willcocks 

 (Entomologist to the Society), Mr. Balls (Botanist), and Mr. Hughes 

 (Chemist). This is a private Society, but is supplemented with a sum 

 of money from the Government to pay the salaries of the officers, who 

 have well fitted laboratories and an experimental garden, where experiments 

 in breeding cotton are carried on in conjunction with other crops. I went 

 through their collection, and also over their plots. We called upon Mr. 

 Brown who is in charge of the Gardens of the School of Agriculture, a 

 separate Institution, the Director of which (Dr. Fletcher) I met on the 

 iollowing day. 



The worst enemv of the cotton all over Egypt is the bollworm {Earias 

 znsulana), which lays its eggs upon the square, and the young caterpillars 

 6urrow into the small boll, damaging it, so that it falls off and never 

 reaches maturity, much after the same fashion that the larva of the 

 American boll weevil does in the United States. The moth is a very 

 handsome little green creature, and the species found feeding upon 

 cotton growing at the Hawkesbury College, and also at Moree, and de- 

 scribed in the Agricultural Gazette of Xeic South Wales as Earias fabia 

 (1903) is identical with this variable and widely distributed species. 



The fruit industry is very poorh represented in Cairo; most of the 

 best oranges are imported, and it is very curious that while there is some 

 red scale upon the orange trees here, the common and by far the worst 

 scale of the citrus trees in Egypt is the round .scale {Aspidiotus flcus), the 

 fruit often being thickly encrusted with the scale. There is quite a 

 number of apricot gardens around Cairo, but the trees, apparently all 

 seedlings, are let to run wild, and though they are irrigated, the fruit 

 is very small and is gathered by shaking the trees and gathermg it out of 

 the dust. In the market there was a great quantity of fine vegetables 

 of all kinds, and on several stalls I saw bundles of vine leaves for 

 sale; the seller told me that the Arabs slice them up and eat them 

 with rice. 



I visited the Survey Department where I saw all the plans of the Nile 

 Delta lands, with their thousands of little plots of freehold land often 



