82 CEREALS 



must approach 25,000,000 sterling. He thrives in the 

 bland or sweltering airs of the great sub-continent. He 

 lurks amid the dust and detritus of last year's crop, in 

 every crevice of the sun-baked brickwork or the bamboo 

 matwork of the granaries, and when the new-crop grain 

 is brought in, fresh and clean and succulent, he sallies 

 forth in his (and her) myriads, and performs prodigies of 

 reproduction. The destruction of grain is enormous, but 

 it has never been properly ascertained in India, although 

 in some laboratory experiments conducted by Mr. David 

 Hooper, of the India Museum, some 65 per cent, of the 

 grain was found to be destroyed in three months. In a 

 recent Nyasaland publication the average loss by weevil 

 in that country is put at about 25 to 30 per cent. In places 

 one finds among the people an extraordinary delusion 

 that the weevil does no harm. A Burman advanced this 

 theory to me some years ago, and when he had at my 

 instance fetched a sample of his last year's rice and had 

 been shown a very large number of hollow grains, he 

 said: "Oh, yes, no doubt; but the rice is always win- 

 nowed before it is used, and all these hollow grains go 

 away." The idea that their departure represented loss 

 eventually dawned upon him and set him grinning. A parcel 

 of grain which has once been " infected " by weevil may 

 " break out " at any time. In other countries the weevil 

 is occasionally dealt with by means of fumes and gases; 

 but in India we are at present trying the effect of simple 

 drying, and the results, so far as arrived at, are very 

 encouraging. Gases have the disadvantage that, though 

 they may kill the parent weevil, they do not readily 

 penetrate to the interior of the grain where the larva is 

 feeding; nor is it at all likely that they will sterilize the 

 eggs. But it appears that not only does the weevil die 

 when a certain point of dryness is reached, but the larva 

 is unable to feed or even to come into existence. There 

 are many points to be cleared up, but the study of the 

 question is being prosecuted at the Agricultural Research 

 Institute in Pusa and in the Punjab; and there is some 

 expectation that drying may be found to afford protection 

 against weevil as well as against mildew. The work of 

 Mr. Fletcher and Dr. Leather points to 8 per cent, as 



