25 



Banks, has defoliated the pahns in Mindanao, while in Luzon it is 

 innocuous, being held in check bv its natural enemies. Other minor 

 or local pests of the coconut are the butterflies Padraona chrysozona, 

 Plotz, and Amathusia phidippus, and a leaf-miner beetle, Promecotheca 

 cumniingi, Baly. 



The tobacco pest, Lasioderma serricorne, F., has always occasioned 

 great loss to manufacturers owing to their prejudice against treating 

 their products chemical]}'. However an apparatus has now been 

 devised by means of which all beetles in tobacco products can be killed, 

 whether in the egg, larval, pupal or adult stage. The process consists 

 in heating the tobacco to a temperature higher than the vapour 

 tension point of water at a pressure of 28 inches, after which air is 

 pumped out till a 28-inch vacuum is registered by the vacuometer. 

 The result is that the water content of all bodies is thereby changed 

 to the gaseous form, thus causing the death of all insects. 



A sugar-cane borer, probably Diatraea venosata {striatalis), has been 

 noted in two provinces, but is evidently controlled locally by some 

 native parasites, as it has never reached the point of injurious 

 abundance. Proutisla (Phenice) moesta, Westw., has been very 

 abundant, causing extensive damage by sucking the juice from the 

 leaves, while two species of leaf-hoppers have been held in check by 

 natural enemies. 



The death of a large number of abaca plants [Musa textile] was found 

 to be due to a wee\dl. Cosmopolites sordid us, Germ., a common local 

 banana pest, the only means of controlling which lies in the destruction 

 of the affected plants. 



The rice pest, Schoenobius incertellus, Walk, {punctellus, Zell.) has 

 never been present in numbers sufficient to cause damage in districts 

 where the entire plant is destroyed after harvesting. Hand-picking 

 the infested stems as soon as the head turns white destroys the larvae 

 and forms an effective control. The only remedy against the rice-bug, 

 Leptocorisa acuta, Thunb., seems to lie in delaying the planting of 

 quick-maturing varieties so that the entire crop will ripen at the same 

 time; otherwise the earlier crops are attacked and rendered valueless. 



During the year the follo\\nng insect pests have been intercepted : 

 Hemileia vastatrix and Coccids on plants and cuttings from Java ; 

 Ourculionid larvae in seeds from Costa Rica ; CurcuUonid and 

 Dipterous larvae and mites in seeds from British India ; Coccids on 

 plants from Japan ; Pyralid larvae and moths from Mauritius and 

 {^traits Settlements ; Bruchids and Curculionids in seeds from Hawaii ; 

 Aphids and Coccids from Japan. 



A phase of pest control work that has yielded good results consists 

 of lectures on Prodenia litura, F. (tobacco worm), Idiocenis dypealis 

 (a leaf-hopper attacking the mango blossom), and a Tortricid web- worm 

 attacking the young leaves ; these are delivered in the native dialect 

 of the town in which the inspectors are operating. 



Fernald (H. T.). Department of Entomology. — Twenty-ninth Annual 

 Report Massachusetts Agric. Expt. S(a., Boston, January 1917, 

 78a-79a. [Received Uth November 1917.] 



During 1915 the ravages of Otiorrhynchus ovatus, L. (strawberry 

 crown girdler) were recorded, but the methods of treatment adopted 



