55 



By referring- to the annual report of the Director of the Colonial 

 Bacteriological Institute of the Cape of . Good Hope for 1898 it will 

 be learned that the much-advertised South African locust fungus has 

 been determined by the working force of that institution to be an 

 Empusa; and the name Ewpusa aeridiiAvxi^ been suggested for it since 

 it was reported to have attacked other species than the red locust 

 {Acridlmn, 2)urpu,rlfei'uni Walk.), one of the chief destructive species 

 of that section. Plates I, II, and III, which are photographic repro- 

 ductions accompanying that report, show these locusts as they appear 

 upon the vegetation after death caused by the fungus. Judging from 

 what is known concerning the actions of insects after having been 

 attacked by different fungi, a person who is conversant with the sub- 

 ject would at once pronounce the malady portrayed here to be that 

 resulting from the presence of an Empusa. To verify this conclusion 

 in part we have the following records: Mr. Charles P. Lounsbury, 

 government entomologist, in the Agricultural Journal of the Cape of 

 Good Hope, Februar}^ 2, 1899, sa3's that the disease is apparently 

 identical with Mnpusa grylli^ and quotes as authoritj^ for this state- 

 ment Dr. Schoidand and Dr. Black, of the Bacteriological Institute of 

 Natal. Also Dr. Munro, in his ])ook on the Locust Plague (p. 182), 

 quotes from a Mr. Evans as follows: 



On the 4th of this month I wrote a letter stating that a fungus had been found in a 

 locust causing its death, and it was afterwards determined by Mr. George Murray, 

 F. L. >S., head of the botanical department of the British Museum, as Empuna grylli. 



While the insects in question have apparently died as a result of the 

 presence of an Empusa, an entirely dili'erent fungus appears to have 

 been isolated from the dead locusts and afterwards grown in quantity 

 and sent out from the lal)oratory to ))e utilized in fighting the same 

 pests. In this report, referred to above, we find a description and 

 illustrations of a fungus which in no wise resembles or approaches 

 Empusa. In fact, both the descriptions and figures suggest a Mucor 

 instead, and possibly the world-wide distributed Mucor raceriiosus Fres. , 

 which does not belong to the insect-destroying fungi at all, but to the 

 ordinary molds. Strangely enough the tubes of the so-called South 

 African locust fungus received by the writer, both while in Argentina 

 during 1898 and here in Nebraska two j^ears later, contained fine 

 growths of what was evidently the above-named Mucor. 



In glancing over the files of the Journal of the Department of Agri- 

 culture of Western Australia for July, 1901, a statement was found 

 to the efi^ect that "The destruction of locusts by means of a parasitic 

 fungus {Mucor raceniosus) has now passed from the domain of experi- 

 mentation into that of everyda}^ practice. The method which has been 

 tried in various places where swarms of locusts proved troublesome 

 to vegetation, notably South Africa, has ))een for the past two or three 

 years successfully applied in Victoria." 



