obvious is it that one can probably say without exaggeration that it 

 has been suggested by every single person who has seriously studied 

 the pink boll worm, and in Egypt it was proposed as long ago as 1873 

 for the purpose of controlling the common boll worm (Earias insulana 

 Boisd.) by Andrea Bey, Gastanil Bey, and Ahmed Effendi Nada in 

 a report submitted to the Council of Representatives by the Cotton 

 Pest Committee. Accordingly, when in 1913 the pink boll worm rose 

 to prominence as the worst cotton pest Egypt has ever known, the 

 Ministry of Agriculture adopted boll-picking as the standard method 

 of control and enacted Law No. 4 of 1914 by which the collection and 

 destruction of all bolls remaining on the sticks at the end of the season 

 was made compulsory. 



In the winter of 1913-1914, owing to the late start that was 

 made, it was practically impossible to do anything. ' In the autumn 

 of 1914 the war began and again nothing was done. In 1915 a pre- 

 liminary campaign was carried out, and in 1916 a stricter law was 

 brought into force and a fairly serious effort was made to have all 

 the cotton sticks in the country properly cleaned before being pulled 

 up. Large quantities of cotton sticks were burnt as punishment for 

 infringements of the law, and in spite of the opposition of cultivators 

 in general, both large and small, a fairly high percentage of the bolls 

 was removed from the sticks. In order to control insects which have 

 a very rapid rate of increase, however, it is necessary to kill a very 

 large percentage indeed in order to produce a visible effect, and at 

 the end of the 1916 campaign, the present writer, who had control 

 of the work in the Province of Qalyubiya, estimated, as actually proved 

 to be the case, that enough bolls had been left behind to carry on 

 the infestation without appreciable diminution. 



In 1917, had the campaign been carried out on the same lines, 

 a considerable improvement in the work might reasonably have been 

 expected owing to the greater experience of the staff of the Ministry 

 and the increased familiarity with the work on the part of the cul- 

 tivators at large. However, owing to the violent agitation against 

 the burning of cotton sticks on account of the scarcity of fuel, this 

 method of punishing offenders was removed and the only punishments 

 inflicted were the fines imposed by the courts which were so ridicu- 

 lously small that they had no effect whatsoever. The result was that 

 the 1917 campaign, instead of showing an improvement, was very 

 much less efficiently carried out than that of 1916. 



Since that time the officials of the Ministry, receiving no support 

 but much opposition from the population in general, and meeting 

 with no thanks from any one for their ungrateful task, have expended 

 less and less energy on the boll worm campaign, so that, although 

 boll-picking was still compulsory by law, the number picked during 



