444 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 5 



the wishes of the President of the Board that the investigations on this subject be 

 stopped and the publication or announcements of results already obtained be withheld. 



Very respectfully, 

 (Signed) JOHN W. GILMORE, 



President. 



Over a hundred breeding jars containing bananas and several doz- 

 ens containing pineapples were emptied into a garbage can following 

 this order from the Board of Regents. A request was made to the 

 president of the College of Hawaii for sufficient time to await the re- 

 sults of these experiments, but this was not granted. 



Mr. E. M. Ehrhorn, superintendent of entomology in the Hawaiian 

 Islands, who was most bitter in his criticism against the work as it 

 was conducted, argued that impossible conditions were created, from 

 which false conclusions would be drawn and that nature would be 

 temj^ted, for if the fruit flies were forced to breed in bananas, some of 

 the specimens of the new generation might escape from the breeding 

 jar and these would probably breed in bananas again. These argu- 

 ments are not worth further consideration. 



Realizing that millions of dollars were at stake in the United States 

 if the fruit fly was able to breed in bananas and pineapples under nat- 

 ural conditions, for almost every week a steamer is carrying either 

 bananas or pineapples into California from the Hawaiian Islands, we 

 considered it our duty as entomologists to continue this investigation. 

 As soon as this work was stopped at the College of Hawaii, a private 

 room not in connection with this institution, was equipped with the 

 necessary apparatus to conduct the interrupted research. 



The first problem which we attempted to solve was: Will the acids 

 of the peel or the pulp of green Chinese bananas prevent the eggs of the 

 Mediterranean fruit fly from hatching, and if not, what effect will these 

 acids have upon the developing maggots? 



Female fruit flies, captured in the field while they were ovipositing 

 in oranges, were taken to the laboratory and vivisected in order to 

 obtain eggs; most of the eggs were dissected from the ovaries, others 

 from the two oviducts and a few from the oviductus communis. Some 

 of these eggs were inserted into the peel and pulp of green Chinese 

 bananas and others within the peel and pulp of California oranges. 

 If the eggs were to develop in the California oranges and not in the 

 green Chinese bananas, we would have some fairly good experimental 

 evidence that the fruit fly eggs cannot develop in green Chinese ban- 

 anas. The eggs did not develop in either the oranges or the bananas. 

 In all probability the eggs dissected from the ovaries and two ovi- 

 ducts were not fertilized, and since it was open to question' whether 



