40 THE RICE GEASSHOPPER 



in sweeping the bag over the ground, for the men 

 working it to move as fast as possible. Thereby larger 

 catches can be made and there is less danger of the escape 

 of those grasshoppers already caught in the bag. At the 

 end of each sweep, the grasshoppers are shaken into a 

 corner of the bag and crushed or emptied into a tin 

 containing water with a small quantity of kerosene on the 

 surface. 



Two patterns of bags were used. In one type the 

 base of the bag was square (see Text-fig. 4), in the other 

 the bag was cut away about two feet back so as to come to 

 a point. The two types were about equally effective, the 

 second type offering a slight advantage in that the 

 grasshoppers were more readily shaken together in it than 

 in the first. 



Anyone, who has had experience in organising a 

 campaign among raiyats, will appreciate the difficulties 

 and delays that are sure to occur in a first attempt in 

 this direction. Our experience in this regard was no 

 exception to the general rule. The result was that 

 operations could not be begun before the 1st of August, 

 when the hoppers had, for the most part, reached about 

 the third in star. The whole of the operations had thus 

 to be conducted during the height of the monsoon, when 

 the heavy rains and high winds made the work very diffi- 

 cult, while at the same time the results obtained were less 

 satisfactory. 



The extremely wet weather prevailing during the 

 bagging operations introduced many difficulties. The 

 bags became almost immediately saturated with water 

 and so were heavy and did not open up readily. Moreover 

 the hoppers sought, to a large extent, the bases of the 

 clumps of grass for protection from the rain and were 

 more difficult to dislodge. 



While the main campaign was conducted in August, 

 in the case of some of the villages the work was continued 

 into September. In some cases, the hoppers had already 

 transferred themselves to the paddy in large numbers 

 and in these cases bagging was done in the paddy 

 fields themselves. The following table shows the time 

 and labour expended, amount of land covered and results 

 obtained. 



