33 



At midnight on the 28th of January I left Barbados for Southampton, 

 and arrived there on the night of 9th of the following month. On the 

 following morning I called upon Mr. Coghlan, at our Agent-General's office, 

 and asked if there had been any instructions sent for me from any of the 

 Australian States I was representing, and on the next morning called upon 

 thr Agents-General of Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia. 



-My next work was to get into touch with the authorities at the Natural 

 History Museum, at Cromwell-road ; and, after meeting Messrs. Waterhouse 

 and Ivirby, who took me all over the offices and introduced me to the staff, I 

 set to work and examined many of the economic collections. With Mr. 

 Austin (in charge of the Diptera) I hunted through the fruit flies and other 

 injurious species, but found few named specimens of our particular fruit pests. 

 Whenever not otherwise engaged, I spent my time at the entomological 

 rooms of the Museum, examining specimens and making notes on the collec- 

 tions ; and each officer on the staff gave me every help in his power. With 

 Mr. Roland Turner and Colonel Bingham I went through some of the 

 hymenoptera. Mr. Distant showed me many of the unique forms of 

 Australian cicadas in the collections, Mr. Kirby looked up the locusts and 

 grasshoppers, and Mr. Gahan the beetles. 



At Wye Agricultural College, in Kent, I spent a day with Mr. Theobald, 

 the Principal. He is one of the leading authorities on the Mosquitoes, and 

 lias published the two Economic Entomology reports in the British Museum. 

 He took me through the laboratories and buildings, and then over the farm 

 and orchard. Here they have a large dairy, but the cows under shelter did 

 not look so happy as ours. I noted that they still use underground silos, and 

 the milking sheds were not up to ours. Some interesting experiments in 

 testing the value of the different cattle foods were being carried out in the 

 dairy herd. This being in the hop country, they had an up-to-date outfit for 

 drying hops with heated air. 



The orchard is on poor, chalk land. The pears and apple trees are planted 

 1 feet apart, pruned low, and looked very well. No blight-proof stocks are 

 used in English orchard?, and in consequence, in all the old orchards, American 

 blight or Woolly Aphis is common, both upon the roots and branches. Most 

 of their trees are grafted upon Paradise stocks. Paraffin (low illuminating 

 oil, worth 4d. per gallon), mixed with fish oil and caustic soda, is the chief 

 wash used in this orchard. One of the worst insect pests of the pear is "the 

 Pear-bud Fly ( Diphnt^ S P-)? which lays her eggs in the calyx of the freshly- 

 formed fruit. The little maggot gnaws the tissue, causing them to swell out 

 and finally drop off. The gooseberry-bud mite is also a serious pest to- 

 curran's, infesting the buds and causing them to drop off. Canker is very 

 common in the apple orchards ; and wherever the bark is bruised or damaged, 

 canker spores infest it, and do more or less damage. The Apple Psylla 

 ( Pitylla mal'i) is another srious apple pest, and the Saw Fly larva.' attack the 



Mi. Salmon (the mycologist) showed me a number of interesting specimens 

 of fungous diseases. Among the serious pests of the potato he pointed out 

 "Blark S-aV (Ckrytopklyctis endobiotiea, Schilb.), that was only introduced 

 into England about 1*95, and has now spread over nine counties of England 

 and Scotland. It could be very easily introduced into Australia with seed 

 potatoes. 



American Gooseberry Mildew (SpJtf roth^rn ?m>/-,s>//v/, Bull.) is a well-known 



] x-sf in America, and is said to have been introduced into the gooseberry orchards 



<>f Kn^'land about ci^ht yirs ago. In that time it has spread all over 



England and Ireland, and has appeared in different parts of the Continent. 



39557 B 



