— Oy, = 
suitable; but such were not really possible because an appliance 
giving a good bright light, that will keep alight in a high wind, does 
not exist in the villages, and only near large towns have proper 
glass-chimneyed lanterns been seen or are available. In the big 
towns anything may be bought; in the thousands of villages, 
isolated from the towns, nothing is available but what can be made 
of bamboo, wood, cloth and rope, and the only insecticidal sub- 
stance is kerosene; even for making kerosene emulsion, soap is 
not generally obtainable, and one is driven to reject all such 
appliances and to turn to something far simpler. 
In India, as in other tropical countries, the losses from Insects 
are considerable; no statistics are available because the recording 
staff competent to attribute a failure of crops to the proper source 
is not existent. The value of cotton lost annually, that might be 
saved, is perhaps two million pounds; in the epidemic of Bollworm 
in the Punjab and Sind in 1906-1907, the loss of the crop over a 
large area was from 40 to 100 °/o, and the value of the crop lost was 
somewhere about £ 2,000,000 In the Locust campaign of 1903-1904, 
£ 14,000 was spent in rewards for destroying Locusts in one pro- 
vince, which was regarded as a form of State relief to those who 
lost crops eaten by Locusts. In parts of Eastern Bengal and Bengal, 
the rice crop is sometimes a failure over a considerable area or the 
loss is a very heavy proportion; so too with other staple crops and 
it is no exaggeration to say that in some districts certain crops are 
not grown because the experience has been handed down that 
crop is a failure, originally owing to Insect-pests which were not 
checked, the reason being now forgotten. Now that the Agri- 
cultural Department, with no knowledge of this inherited art, are 
introducing new crops to new districts and testing crops on expe- 
rimental farms, this is being found out, and it is certainly true that 
the immunity of a crop from Insect-pests has probably been a 
determining factor in many cases whether that crop was grown in 
that district or not. In the past another crop was substituted for a 
crop liable to attack, and though the reason is now forgotten, it is 
probable this was in the past fully taken into account. At the 
present day, staple crops suffer severely from epidemic crop pests 
at intervals of several years; they also suffer from minor pests 
regularly, but not to such an extent as to prevent their cultivation. 
Both of these forms of loss can, we believe, be prevented wholly 
or in part. 
The cultivating classes have inherited a system of agriculture 
