132 THE DATE PALM. 



such stuff after the Rhinoceros beetle has been extracted from 

 them, and that the beetle may be extracted by probing the hole 

 with an iron wire hooked or barbed at the end. A little tar 

 on the top of the plug is also recommended. 



In past years, however, I found that syringing 3 per cent, 

 sanitary fluid, or an emulsion composed of 2 Ib. Toria (Bmssica 

 campestris var. toria, Duthie) oil, i oz. of asafcetida, and 2 gallons 

 of water into the holes in the trees occupied by the red weevil 

 gave good results, and the idea of getting insecticides to reach 

 the insects when they have penetrated deep into the tree trunk 

 has been further elaborated. In the most recent and most 

 severe attack on our young Arabian trees, eighty palms approxi- 

 mately were more or less severely attacked by red weevil within a 

 month of the removal of suckers from them. Insect burrows, 6 to 

 8 inches in length, were in many cases found in the stem at the 

 bases of the green functional leaves, running parallel to the line 

 of insertion of the leaf-base on the stem, and near enough the 

 stem surface to be exposed along the whole length of the burrow 

 by removing the leaf-base from the stem. Other burrows were 

 found to penetrate into the hearts of young suckers that had 

 been still left on the tree. Others again had gone deep into the tree 

 trunk. Where burrows came near the surface of the stem, 

 their presence was usually indicated by a copious flow of dirty 

 juice from the stem at that point. Many nearly full-grown 

 larvae were taken out of the burrows while endeavours were 

 made to get at those in the deeper burrows by probing with 

 wires, injecting various insecticides into the burrows, etc. Later 

 we cleared the debris from the insect burrow r s as far as possible, 

 filled them with concentrated insecticide undiluted sanitary 

 fluid in some cases, crude oil emulsion or lead arsenate in others- 

 made a large mud-basin round the base of each affected tree 

 (see Illustration No. 46, page USa), and filled the basins with 

 water twice daily. The walls of the basins were made higher 

 than the affected parts of the trees and the water was filled to 

 over the levels of these parts. Large numbers of larvae which 

 had come out of the affected trees were found dead in the water 



