47 



Scale insects do not appear to do much damage, for all the fruit was 

 remarkably clean ; in a very few instances only were scales noticed upon the 

 fruit. 



On the 30th April I left Constantinople for Cyprus vid Smyrna and 

 Beyrout, reaching my destination on the 6th of May. A day was spent in 

 Smyrna where the markets were visited, and we stayed two days at Beyrout. 

 The latter is an important centre of the silk industry, and for miles beyond 

 the town the fields are nearly all planted with mulberry trees, and there were 

 many reeling machines and hand-looms working in the houses in the outskirts 

 of the town. There were large mat-covered houses in the centre of many of 

 the fields where they were evidently feeding the silk worm =, but without a 

 guide it was not advisable to trespass too far into their fields. One of the 

 things that struck me much at all these ports was the slaughter of all the 

 small birds in the fields ; every Turk I met had a gun, and shot a*i every bird 

 that moved ; while in the markets there were scores of dealers selling strings 

 of birds from swallows to dollar birds. 



Reaching Larnica early in the morning, my arrangements were much 

 simplified by the kindness of Mr. Clement Reid, of the Geological Survey 

 Department of London, who was visiting Cyprus on official business, and had 

 a carriage to take us on at oijce to Nicosia, the capital, 25 miles inland. 

 The country between Larnica and Nicosia is the worst part of the island, 

 being destitute of anything but little prickly shrubs, and consists of lime- 

 stone and marl hills forming low undulating country. At Nicosia the 

 country improves, and beyond the town there is a considerable amount of 

 cultivation. My first business was with the Director of Agriculture, Mr. 

 Saracomenos, and we made an appointment for the following day to see the 

 locust hunters and their camp. 



Though I have given some account of the methods adopted, in my Progress 

 Report upon the methods used in dealing with the locust plague in Cyprus 

 since the British occupation of the island in 1879, the question of our locust 

 or grasshopper plagues is such an important one that I propose to repeat my 

 previous information. At the time when the British Government took over 

 the island of Cyprus from the Turkish Government, agreeing to administer the 

 country under mixed tribunals, and paying a sum of .90,000 per annum for 

 the value of the revenue obtained in taxes from the island, the hordes of 

 locusts that bred in the barren lands usually ate about half the crops, and 

 occasionally all of them. The destruction of these pests was one of the first 

 problems that the authorities had to take in hand if they were g- ing to get 

 any revenue to pay the Turkish Government. 



Through the kindness of Mr. A K. Bovill, Chief of the Forestry Depart- 

 ment, I obtained a complete set of the Comnrssioners' reports, from the time 

 when they first commenced active field operations against the locusts in 1880. 



In the 1880-1 report, by Commissioner Inglis, Famagusta, all able-bodied 

 men in the district of Nicosia, and throughout the infested districts, were 

 assessed to furnish 7 okes of locust eggs before the 1st of October, after 

 which date they had to furnish 8 okes ; and in the district of Nicosia 80 per 

 cenN of the people collected this quantity. The collection of the eggo com- 

 menced at the end of June, and within six months 138,422 okes ot eggs had 

 been gathered ; as every pod (or egg-cluster) contained from 30 to 35 eggs, 

 and each oke contained from 450 to 500, this represented a total of two 

 thousand million locusts. 



In March, 1881, however, in spite of all this destruction, the locusts 

 appeared just as bad as ever, and it was decided to try Mattei's plan of screens 

 and pits ; this was so successful that it was continued every year until 1897, 



