23° = THE JOLA OR DECCAN GRASSHOPPER 
before it had been allowed to do any damage whatever. 
Such measures are, however, attended by difficulties from 
the fact that the egos are deposited in the ground. 
Searching for and collecting ege-masses is, therefore, 
practically out of the question. 
The fact that the ege-masses are, to a large extent, 
deposited in the fields themselves indicates that measures 
for (a) exposing the eggs to the air, or (b) burying the 
masses deeper in the soil, might be successful. 
In order to expose and break up the ege-masses, a 
shallow ploughing about three or four inches deep with an 
improved plough which would invert the soil, followed by 
a thorough breaking of the clods, would be required. By 
this means, the ege-masses s would be largely brought to 
the surface and would be broken up so as to be exposed 
to the action of sun and air and to destruction by lizards 
and other animals which feed upon them. Such a pro- 
cedure would, however, be attended by very considerable 
difficulties, especially on black cotton soil where the eggs 
are most abundantly deposited. Such a shallow ploughing 
would have to cut into the very stiff soil just beneath the 
surface layer, which is kept in a more or less powdery 
state by frequent cultivation with the bullock hoe (Kunte), 
and this would be practically impossible unless the soil 
contained just the proper degree of moisture, something 
which due ot be counted on. It has not, as yet, been ex- 
perimented upon in Mysore for this reason. 
A deep ploughing of from eight to nine inches, accom- 
panied by an inversion of the soil, would, on the other hand, 
bury large numbers of the ege-masses much deeper in the 
soil than they are normally. Tf this were followed by a fair 
amount of rain, the lower layers of the inverted soil would 
run together, with the result that the erasshoppers on 
hatching would have to work their way through some five 
or six inches of soil to emerge, instead of the two inches of 
soil which normally le above them. Whether this method 
would be successful would depend largely upon two factors, 
(a) whether the clods were properly inverted and were 
packed down properly afterwards and (0) whether the young 
hoppers were sufficiently strong to make their way up 
through the additional depth of soil. Actual ploughing 
experiments with an improved plough, used by the Agri- 
cultural Department in the spring of 1910, showed that the 
