338 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
The second reason for the failure to control locusts is the isolation- 
ist policy of practically every country subject to their depredations. 
History provides examples of great efforts to control locusts in 
Algeria, South Africa, Argentina, etc., but the results were always 
temporary and never led to a radical solution of the locust problem, 
simply because it is insoluble within a single country. - We have seen 
that swarms in their flights may, and do, cover great distances, and 
that they completely lack respect for any man-made boundaries. 
Swarms of the desert locusts, bred in India, usually migrate to Per- 
sia and Arabia, and their progeny proceed to Egypt, Palestine, and to 
East Africa. It is clear that control measures in any one of these 
countries, however effective, may only protect the standing crops of 
the particular season, but will have no effect on the general situation. 
Sporadic attempts to approach some measure of international 
cooperation have not been lacking. Conventions pledging each coun- 
try to control locusts within its own confines have been concluded 
between groups of adjoining countries (e. g., South American Repub- 
lics; Iraq, Syria, and Turkey; Persia and the Soviet Union, etc.), 
but most of them remained paper agreements only and had no prac- 
tical effect, because they all aimed at defense only, and no attempt 
was ever made to take concerted measures toward a lasting solution 
of the problem. 
The most spectacular failure of such attempts to solve the locust 
problem by resolutions was the Rome International Conference of 
1920. A convention pledging their countries to take all the necessary 
measures against locusts was signed by delegates of 18 countries, 
widely scattered over the globe. It appeared incomprehensible why 
Madagascar should join forces with Mexico, or Bulgaria with Uru- 
guay, since they are threatened by entirely different species of locusts, 
and the course of events in one of them could not possibly have any 
effect on the other; and the solution of the locust problem remained 
unattainable as long as it was approached without sufficient scientific 
basis, though it was certainly right to regard the problem as an inter- 
national one. 
SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF A NEW POLICY 
The irregular periodicity of locust invasions hampered scientific 
research on the problem, just as it did the organization of locust con- 
trol. It was naturally difficult to persuade governments to spend 
money on locust research in the periods when swarms were absent, 
and little could be accomplished during the locust years, when all 
efforts were concentrated on defense. Asa result, there was no answer 
to the question : “What happens to locusts when there are no swarms?” 
Since locusts matter only when they are in swarms, it appeared idle 
