Mr. Robertson- 
Brown. 
Mr. Ghosh. 
Mr. Fletcher. 
172 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING 
In the North-West Frontier Province, soon after, and sometimes 
before, rice is harvested, clover is sown in the rice-fields, the result being 
that the rice-stubble is soon covered up by the clover and rots away and 
thus become unsuitable to carry on borers. The same thing is done in 
the Godavari delta, pulses and gingelly being sown. In Bombay, on 
black soil, the lands are ploughed up soon after harvest, and castor is 
sown. My idea is that such practices are responsible for the diminution 
of trouble caused by borers in such tracts. This has been confirmed at 
Peshawar in the case of sugarcane borers ; in cane-fields which are planted 
with a crop of Shaftal before the cane setts are put in, there is almost an 
absence of borers. 
I think that light traps against Schenobius should be given a trial 
over whole blocks at a time. Trials on a few acres in the middle of a 
block will not give satisfactory results. 
There is no doubt that Schanobius bipunctifer is the most important 
insect pest that we have in India and we want to know a great deal more 
about its exact life-history in all districts. It is one of those insects 
regarding which there is urgent need for intensive research, not in one 
or two districts or Provinces, but throughout the Indian Empire as a 
whole. It is not, of course, confined to India but extends over practi- 
cally the whole of Kastern Asia, so that India, China and Japan, the 
greatest rice-growing countries in the World, are all intimately con- 
cerned in this question. 
One thing that we want to know more about is the various wild grasses 
which may serve as alternative foodplants. Some work on this line 
has been done in Bombay and around Poona ; the following wild grasses 
have been found to be natural food plants: Job’s Tears, Ischemum 
striatum, Andropogon orderatus and Antistheria ciliata. Wf any of you 
have any opportunity of observing other natural foodplants, such in- 
formation will be useful. It will be useful directly for control, for if 
we find that Schenobius is breeding in wild grasses on bunds or other 
places around paddy-fields, we can attack it by control of such wild 
grasses on adjacent areas ; and incidentally this measure will also be 
effective against Leptocorisa. 
There is also a possibility of control of this pest by the use of its 
natural parasites, but this again is a subject which requires detailed 
investigation. The egg-masses are sometimes parasitized but at present 
we do not know what parasites are concerned or to what extent or in 
what areas they occur. Investigation may show that effective parasites 
may occur in some localities within the area of distribution of Scha- 
nobius (not necessarily in India) and we may be able to utilize these. 
