540 PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING" 



At our Second Meeting I called your attention to the interesting 

 results obtained by Mr. Willcocks in his experiments on the emergence 

 of long-cycle larvae of Platyedra gossypiella and pointed out that similar 

 conditions probably exist in India. In gathering material for the present 

 Meeting, I wrote to Mr. Willcocks and asked him if he could 

 contribute a note on any further work he may have done on this insect 

 and he has very kindly forwarded this most suggestive paper. In a 

 letter forwarding his paper, he also writes as follows : — 



" As regards the Pink Boll worm : since 1915 I have done very little 

 work on it as I was put on to other investigations and so I am not in 

 a position to communicate any very interesting matter to the Meeting 

 at Pusa, but please accept my sincere thanks for the opportunity to 

 do so, you so kindly offered to me. 



" G. gossypiella is still a very serious pest in Egypt, but it is hoped 

 that the good work which is being done by the Entomological and 

 Administrative branches of the Ministry of Agriculture will soon bear 

 fruit — in the form of lighter loss from Pink Bollworm attack. I have 

 not statistics at all as regards the loss caused by this insect in Egypt 

 as a whole. The only figures available refer to conditions on our own 

 farm at Bahtim, near Cairo. Here, on calculations based on the exami- 

 nation of the bolls from 200 plants from 100 " holes " or " nogras " 

 we estimate that in 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918 the loss was approxi- 

 mately between 30 and 40 per cent, of the crop. 



I have obtained no new information about the parasites of Gelechia. 

 It is strange that you have not been able to breed any in India. If 

 you wished to, I think it would be a fairly easy matter for you to intro- 

 duce living Gelechia--pSiTa,sites from Egypt. There should be no great 

 difficulty in getting Pimpla roborator across in consignments of Pink 

 Bollworm infested bolls (ripe) picked — say from September to October. 

 You would probably get Chelonella sulcata too in this way. Whether 

 or not the latter is of any importance I really cannot say. From an 

 interesting communication received recently from Mr. Dwight Pierce 

 in America I gather that Chelonella probably lays its eggs in the eggs of 

 the Pink Bollworm moth. This, to me, was news indeed and quite 

 an undreamed of habit — ^it seems so strange for such a comparative- 

 ly large insect to oviposit in the minute Gelechia eggs. 



" In Egypt we (I think I can say we) are still very much in the dark 

 as to the relative importance of the various natural agencies which 

 check the Pink Bollworm, but as will be perfectly clear to you, the proper 

 investigation of this question would employ the time of several men 

 for some considerable time. 



