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Conditions of Entomological Work in India. 
BY K. KUNHI KANNAN, 
Government Entomologist, Bangalore, India. 
(Presented at the meeting of August 4, 1921.) 
The development of Economic Entomology as a branch of 
Scientific Agriculture is so largely due to the United States, 
that in countries where its importance was recognized only - 
later there has been a pronounced tendency to adopt methods 
and results obtained in. the States without reference to their 
suitability to local conditions. India is no exception to the rule. 
The importance of the investigation of crop pests was recog- 
nized only late in the eighties of the last century, but the duty 
was left in the hands of men who were engaged in Museum 
work and who were, therefore, not able to investigate the pests 
reported to them. It was inevitable, therefore, that recom- 
mendations were made based on results obtained in the States, 
and that several of them proved useless. It was not till 1901 
when the Department of Agriculture was reorganized and an 
Agricultural Research Institute established in Pusa, that a full- 
time officer for the study of pests was appointed. Since then 
the work has rapidly developed. Two of the Provinces have 
entomologists of their own, and there is in all the Provinces 
a staff of subordinate officers. In Mysore, one of the native 
States, an entomologist was appointed as early as 1908. The 
Entomological staff in India is still unequal to the immense 
task before it, but in the next few years a more rapid increase 
in the staff is likely to take place. 
Entomological work in India is largely determined by the 
local conditions, and these are different from those of most 
other countries. India is a land of peasant proprietors. The 
average size of holdings is only four acres against sixty or 
eighty in the United States, and the yield from an acre repre- 
sents on an average only what an American farmer would 
willingly spend in spraying alone. Any costly remedies such 
as those employed in the States are, therefore, entirely out of 
question except in regard to crops like coffee and tea, in which 
the yield per acre is sufficiently high. The consequence is that 
Proe. Haw. Ent. Soec., V, No. 1, October, 1922. 
