even if successful, can be said in favour of knowingly introducing plant- 

 eating insects and their larvje, for no one can tell what such insects may do 

 when their own food-plant is finished. 



This Association has sent officers' all over the world to collect and send 

 back parasites of all kinds, and according to the reports that have been 

 furnished to the public, there should now be no scale insects or other pests 

 in the Hawaiian Islands. Yet I found as many scale-insects upon their 

 cultivated plants as would be found in Australia, and also many cosmopolitan 

 pests, such as Fuller's rose beetle (Aramigus ful/eri). This is a small weevil 

 from the United States, where it is the greatest garden pest that rose-growers 

 have to deal with ; it also defoliates many other plants. Then there is the 

 " Japanese Leaf-beetle " (Adoretus umbrosus), a small lamellicorn that is 

 very destructive to all kinds of foliage. They also have the Melon Fly (Dacus 

 cucurbitee), introduced from India, which destroys melons ; it will be noted 

 further on in this report. The Yellow Fever Mosquito (Stegomyiafasciata) is 

 another introduced pest ; while they have also one of the worst of blood- 

 sucking flies in the "Horn Fly,'' so called because Professor Kiley, in one of 

 his reports, figured them clustering round the base of a bullock's horn, a 

 place, by-the-way, where they are seldom found ; but they swarm over the sides 

 and flanks of the unfortunate cattle, and give them no rest, and are just as 

 numerous in the dairy as in the paddock. On the island of Molokai they 

 not only worried the cattle, but settled upon the open sores on the sheep 

 that were infested with scab, and prevented these healing. 



In fact, it would be as difficult to enumerate all the pests that have been 

 accidentally introduced from abroad as it would be to list the purposely 

 introduced more or less useful insects that now form the bulk of the insect 

 fauna of the islands. Even most of the birds commonly met with are 

 introduced, and mostly pests; such as the Rice Bird (Munia ritoria, var. 

 punctata], and the Indian minah (Acridotheres tristis). 



There is an introduced rat that damages the sugar-cane, and the mongoose 

 was introduced from India to destroy it ; but the mongoose has, contrary to 

 expectations, destroyed most of the ground-nesting fauna on the islands 

 except rats, and no one now can keep poultry in the immediate vicinity 

 of Honolulu except in closely-netted yards. 



Last year, the Sugar Planters' Association sent Mr. Muir out to India 

 and the Malay States looking for a parasite for the cane weevil (Sphenoporus 

 obscurus), introduced from Tahiti in banana stems over forty years ago. 

 Professor Koebele was in Mexico looking for parasites of the cane-hoppers. 



One of the greatest successes of the Association was the introduction of 

 a parasitic wasp that destroys the eggs of the very destructive cane-leaf hopper 

 (Perkinsella saccharic ida). This hopper was introduced into their cane-fields 

 about 1902, and caused an immense amount of harm, by depositing its eggs 

 in. the midrib of the leaves and sucking the sap out of the stems, causing 

 injuries that produced a great deal of smut upon the surface. This caused a 

 great loss where the fields were badly infested ; and Professors Koebele and 

 Perkins came over to Queensland in 1904, and spent some months collecting 

 parasites in the northern cane-fields, from whence the hopper had probably 

 been brought. Koebele sent back quantities of several species, one of which 

 became established in the experimental cane growing round their laboratories, 

 and from there was scattered all over the island. When I was there last year 

 (1907) there were plenty of hoppers in the different fields we visited ; but 

 there were also many eggs in the midrib of the leaves, some with parasites 

 and just as many uninfested. So rapid, however, was the spread of this egg 

 parasite over the islands in about two years, that one would almost think 



