91 



by the locust proved to be a temporary regiou, and the iu«ects died off, 

 except iu a few sheltered nooks, where they were destroyed by the local 

 inhabitants acting under Mr. Eeed's advice, chiefly by drawing- thorny 

 bashes, loaded with sufficient weight, over the young locusts before 

 they were more than half an inch long. No separate reports upon the 

 subject were published, Mr. Reed's reports being published in the 

 Diario Oficial. Since the locust emergency Mr. Eeed has been confln- 

 ing himself mainly to systematic entomology, and has published sev- 

 eral interesting papers upon Diptera and Hymenoptera. 



INDIA. 



Among the English colonies the government of India stands out 

 very jn^ominently in the support which it has given to economic ento- 

 mology. A most interesting account of the beginning and growth of 

 this work has been transmitted to me by Mr. E. C. Cotes, from which I 

 take, for the purposes of this paper, the following facts: 



The present arrangement was the outgrowth of two reports, one on 

 the wheat and rice weevil and the other on insecticides, which were 

 drawn up unofficially in the early part of the year 1888 by Mr. Cotes, 

 at the suggestion of the secretary to the govei-nment of India, in the 

 Revenue and Agricultural Department. Mr. Cotes was at that time 

 in charge of the entomological collections of the Indian Museum, and 

 the reports were published by the government, with the consent of 

 the trustees of the Museum, as the tirst two numbers of an official 

 series entitled Notes on Economic Entomology. The title of tliis serial 

 was subsequently changed to Indian Museum Notes, when the trustees 

 of the Museum consented to charge themselves officially with the con- 

 duct of the investigation. The work really commenced in March, 1888, 

 when Mr. Cotes was deputed to attend an agricultural conference at 

 Delhi, where the part to be taken in the scheme by the various pro- 

 vincial governments was discussed. As a result of this conference 

 the departments of land records and agriculture, attached to the vari- 

 ous provincial governments, undertook to arrange for the submittal 

 of reports and specimens from officials concerned with agriculture in 

 all parts of India. The task of collating the results, and also of car- 

 rying on such investigations as could be conducted at headquarters, 

 was intrusted to Mr. Cotes, aided by a staff of six office assistants, 

 whom he was permitted to select. Circular letters were sent out to all 

 parts of the country, and large numbers of reports and specimens soon 

 began to come in. The results were published from time to time and 

 freely circulated among all interested. One of the greatest of the early 

 difficulties was the identification of species, but this was accomplished 

 mainly through correspondence with specialists iu different parts of 

 the world. The results of six years of work are, in brief: The ascer- 

 taining of the identity of several hundred of the more important 

 injurious species which affect crops in India, the recording of the 



