June, '10] HOWARD : AFRICAN LOCUST PROBLEM 269 



and even the streets themselves were covered with dead hoppers and 

 so overpowering was the stench that wagons had to be put on and 

 load after load of dead hoppers was taken away to be buried. 



When the late Mr. Simpson came to the Transvaal as Entomologist, 

 it was not long before he saw that it was impossible for farming to 

 advance until the locust problem was solved. He, therefore, began a 

 study of the question at once. His first move was to study carefully 

 the migrations of the swarms of flying locusts. To do this post cards 

 were prepared. On one side was the address and franking stamp, 

 on the other properly ruled spaces for the required information. 

 These cards were distributed to every farmer, police, post master, 

 railway station master, agricultural society and in fact every per- 

 son who would accept them. As soon as they saw locusts they marked 

 on the card whether they were flyers or hoppers, direction of flight or 

 movement, egg laying, ^ etc. As each card came in the information 

 was recorded with pins and flags on a large map of the Transvaal 

 and at the end of each month copied in colors on a small map. If the 

 cards reported swarms of flying locusts which we thought would pass 

 into other inhabited areas, telegrams of warning were at once sent 

 out, so that farmers could be prepared to drive them from their crops. 

 After a few months of such records had been examined, it could 

 be easily forecasted in what parts of the Transvaal the locusts would 

 oviposit and consequently where work of destruction would have to be 

 carried on. This system was taken from a suggestion of Knuckel 

 d 'Hercules in his work on locusts in Algeria, and was of very great 

 value. After two or three years of studying the migrations of locusts 

 in this way, their movements could almost be forecasted before they 

 approached. 



The next step was to get the hoppers destroyed as soon as they ap- 

 peared. At first the Transvaal farraers were afraid of the arsenic, so 

 the Cyprus locust screens were used. After one season, however, they 

 were abandoned as too clumsy and ineffective. In the meantime ex- 

 periments and demonstrations had been carried on with the Natal 

 spray and this method was adopted entirely. The arsenite of soda 

 and sugar were given free to the farmers while the spray pumps 

 (Myer's Success Bucket Pumps) were loaned free of charge. Where 

 it was impossible to persuade a farmer to use the poison he was al- 

 lowed to use a strong solution of soap and water to spray upon the 

 hoppers. This was not very effective and took too much time to pre- 

 pare, so as a rule he soon came around to the poison method. 



The phenomenal success which followed the work depended, how- 

 ever, on the organization. The year's campaign was always preceded 



