1916] Entomology in the British Empire 



27 



of its life history but he regards the whole thing as a mystery, 

 not comparable with the life of any other animal; he will, as 

 likely as not, call in a priest to check it; the priest will perhaps 

 write four texts from holy writings, place them one at each 

 corner of the field to confine the evil infiuence and then remove 

 one to let out the influence which the texts have incommoded. 

 Or, he will pay a man of a certain caste to plough a line across 

 the field at night, the man having to be stark naked. In some 

 parts locusts are believed to be the incarnation of a particular 

 deity and for each one killed a hundred will come; it is quite 

 likely that this has occurred, of which a few were killed being 

 followed later by a much larger swarm, but where we see no 

 connection, he sees a definite sequence of events. A case came 

 up where a man freed his rice field of a pest by a simple mechan- 

 ical method; his crop benefited but soon after his cow died, 

 and^ to that village the one was a consequence of the other. It 

 is difficult for entomologists in countries such as ours to realize 

 the almost impossible task of overcoming such long inherited 

 and deeply ingrained instincts and reHgious behefs. These 

 facts should be borne in mind in studying the methods employed. 

 The use of insecticides is naturally enormously restricted as also 

 is the employment of any but the simplest of mechanical 

 devices. Largely for these reasons we find the necessity of 

 resorting to such methods as the use of bait traps for moths 

 and hand picking, the latter being rendered possible' by the 

 cheapness of the labor. 



The losses from insects in so large a country are naturally 

 great and in many instances the failure to grow staple crops in 

 certain regions is undoubtedly due to an inherited tradition, 

 resulting from uncontrolled insect outbreaks, that such crops 

 cannot be grown. An outbreak of the cotton boll worm in the 

 Punjab and Sind in 1906-07 caused a loss of about 2,000,000 

 pounds sterHng. In the locust campaign of 1903-04,' 14,000 

 pounds sterhng was spent in destroying these insects in 'one 

 province. The great Kirman Desert of Persia constitutes the 

 chief central breeding place for the parent flights of 6". pereg- 

 rinum, entering India from the northwest. 



In order to understand the organization of the work in 

 applied entomology it is necessary to know the system of 

 government. The government of India is the supreme authority, 



