ENTOMOLOGY 263 



bouring territories working on the migratory locust, Mr. R. C. 

 Maxwell-Darling in the Sudan and Arabia on the desert locust, 

 and Mr. A. P. G. Michelmore in Northern Rhodesia and Tanganyika 

 on the red locust. The Union Government have not contributed 

 funds to this central organization, but the Union Department of 

 Agriculture has itself done important work and has contributed to 

 the general scheme by sending an officer, Mr. Lea, to work on the 

 red locust in East Africa during 1935-6. The team of workers 

 mentioned were enabled to study in the field till 1937, when, 

 however, the funds were exhausted, and only one, Michel- 

 more, remained for a year to add to fundamental knowledge of 

 locusts. 



It has already been pointed out that interest in the financing of 

 locust research is apt to diminish as the outbreaks abate. But there 

 are strong indications that locusts will prove, like other animals, 

 to have a more or less definite periodicity of population. There is 

 a possibility that the locust cycle comes round about every eleven 

 years, and it may be correlated with the eleven-year cycle of sun- 

 spots, temperature, evaporation, and lake levels which has been 

 referred to in Chapter IV. In any case it seems certain that the 

 cycle will come round again, and that as population and cultivated 

 areas increase, the damage done will be progressively more serious 

 in each outbreak. The continuation of research in the intermediate 

 years between the outbreaks is, therefore, of the first importance. 

 Above all, field work should be continued until the central head- 

 quarters of the solitary phase of each species are located in detail, 

 and subsequently a constant watch should be kept on them so that 

 swarming can be forecast and perhaps nipped in the bud. 



In addition to the locust work centred in the Imperial Institute 

 a number of other independent researches are in progress. In 

 South Africa, Professor J. C. Faure of Pretoria has been appointed 

 Director of Locust Research for the Union. With four entomolo- 

 gists and two assistant entomologists he is engaged in field and 

 laboratory studies on the bionomics of locusts and in collating data 

 from all parts of the Union. In an important work by Faure (1935) 

 the details of the red locust's life history are established. The 

 government entomologists in Nigeria, Mr. Golding, Mr. Lean, and 

 Mr. Gwynn, have made a special study of locusts in the suspected 



