Illingzvorth — £0^/3; references to Hazvaiian entomology 13 



a traveler becomes acquainted with in going about among Hawaiians and sleep- 

 ing in native houses, and it is the last he is so glad to bid good-by to when he 

 comes away, though it is ten chances to one if they do not insist upon keeping 

 him company and making themselves familiar half the voyage home. 



The Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society organized in 1850 did splen- 

 did work for several years. In the Transactions of this society I found a 

 number of references to entomology. William Duncan (36) suggested 

 good cultivation and clean culture for the eradication of insects and urged 

 that land adjoining sugar plantations be either kept fallow or burned to 

 keep away caterpillars. 



Dr. Wesley Newcomb also contributed to the Transactions (37) an 

 interesting paper in which (p. 95) he states that Vanessa cardui was intro- 

 duced presumably at the same time as Argenione mexicana (poppy or 

 thistle) though he does not suggest the date. Among other insects, he 

 mentions three species of Sphynx, one of them, S. pugnans, being common 

 at Honolulu. Of the small moths he recognized seven species as enemies 

 of agriculture and gives the larval characters of the principal cut-worms. 

 The corn leaf-hopper, or corn-fly, he records as a serious pest at that time. 

 He mentions also the red spider as destructive to the leaves of many plants 

 and a microscopic white fly (from his description difficult to determine) 

 destructive to the leaves of melons. Mention, too, is made of a small 

 caterpillar that bores into the stalks of tobacco — undoubtedly the tobacco 

 split worm, Phthorimaea opercidclla Z. a rather serious pest in more recent 

 years. The description of a wormlike borer of the sweet potato suggests 

 the larva of our common pest, the sweet potato weevil, Cylas formicarius 

 Fab. Newcomb states that he was not able to detect any true aphids, but 

 he recognizes that the numerous ants filling the soil play an important 

 part in the destruction of the larvae of pestiferious moths and of other 

 insects. 



At meetings of the Society in 1851, the introduction of the common 

 honey bee was considered, and the next year it was reported (38) that 

 three hives were coming from New Zealand by the first vessel direct to 

 Honolulu. I could find no statement indicating that these ever arrived, 

 but the record (42) shows that two years later an attempt to import two 

 hives of bees from Boston proved unsuccessful because of the ravages of 

 the bee moth on the way. In 1855, a report was presented to the Society 

 upon the economic relation of insects to crops with suggestions for the 

 importation of natural enemies of these from abroad (45). The report 

 states that though wasps are abundant, bees have not yet been success- 

 fully introduced. 



At a meeting in 1856 a very valuable paper was presented by the well- 

 known botanist, Dr. William Hillebrand (46). This paper written by 

 Valdemar Knudsen, deals primarily with the control of cutworms which 



