277 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII. 
points by rearing the insect upon a considerable scale in large cages which 
were specially constructed for the purpose in the Indian Museum, The cages 
were placed under somewhat different conditions of sunlight and moisture, but 
in each case the insects, though reared from the egg to the imago stage without 
difficulty, died off before any ovipositing took place. 
Considerable quantities of eggs were received from Rawalpindi and Pesha- 
war in the spring of 1891. The first sets dried up without hatching in spite 
of the attempts that were made to keep them moist by watering the earth in 
which they were placed (1). Eggs received in the end of March, however, 
hatched out freely, though a large proportion are believed to have been 
destroyed by the parasitic flies that also emerged in large numbers (*). These 
young locusts were reared through all their stages without difficulty, though 
there was considerably greater mortality amongst them than had been the case 
with the ones that were reared in the Museum the previous year, and this in 
spite of the fact that the rearing cages were larger than before, and were kept 
some in the Museum and others in the open air, with a view to testing the 
conditions most favourable to the development of the insect. The young 
locusts acquired wings by the middle of May, but died off so rapidly that there 
was hardly any of them left by the end of the month. It was not possible, 
therefore, to make any observations as to the time at which they would lay 
their eggs. . 
On the 19th June, 1891, Captain C.G. Parsons wrote from Kohat that up to 
a few days previously locusts had been obtainable in the western portion of 
the district in every phase of development from eggs to fully-winged insects. 
He concluded that the process of egg-hatching had continued from the beginning 
of April until the beginning of June in tracts of country where the difference in 
elevation caused only a slight change of climate. We have seen that the locusts 
that were hatched from the earlier batches of eggs acquired wings in May, 
but there is evidence to show that these young locusts were not the parents 
of the eggs found by Captain Parsons in the middle of June,and probably not 
of any of the eggs laid during the rains. The flights which overran the North- 
West Provinces and other parts of India during the rains of 1891 were com- 
posed, as we have seen, of the young locusts in question. Large numbers of speci- 
mens from these flights were sent to the Museum from various places, but the 
numerous females that were dissected invariably had their ovaries far too un- 
developed for egg-laying, It is clear, therefore, that these young locusts could 
not have been the parents of the later broods of eggs. The case of the locusts 
sent to the Museum from flights which visited Singbhoom in the end of June 
(:) This would seem to indicate that breaking up the land to expose the eggs to the air 
would be useful, provided it were done soon after the eggs were laid. Later on ploughing up 
the land becomes almost useless as the eggs hatch out whether exposed to the air or not. 
(?) Noticed more fully in No. I. of this volume, pages 84 and 35. 
