114 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIV. No. 1388 



natural enemies has become an important 

 technique during the last generation. But if 

 competent observers are to be trusted, the 

 southern Arabs employed the same method 

 more than 150 years ago, in the culture of the 

 date-palm. 



In his " Relation d'un Voyage dans 

 I'Yemen" (Paris, 1880, p. 155), P.-E. Botta 

 says: 



I was aible to verify tlie siaglar fact previously 

 observed 'by Forskal, that the date-palms in 

 Yemen are attacked fcy a species of ant which 

 would cause them to perish, if each year the 

 growers did not bring from the mountains and 

 fasten in the tops of the palms branches of a tree 

 that I did not recognize, which contain the nests 

 of another species of ant which destroys that of 

 the date-.palm. 



P. Forskal was the naturalist of C. Nie- 

 buhr's expedition; his vyork was published 

 posthumously in 1775. I have not seen his ac- 

 count to which Botta refers. 



It would be interesting to know whether 

 the history of economic entomology furnishes 

 any earlier record of the " biological method " 

 of pest control. 



Paul Popenoe 



Thermal, Calip., 

 April 24, 1921 



A LONGLIVED WOODBORER 



From its burrow ip. the top piece of an old 

 birch book-case at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, a soft 

 white wood-boring grub was shaken recently, 

 when the owner discovered the newly made 

 opening and conical pile of wood chewings 

 that had been thrust out. There is nothing 

 unusual about finding grubs in wood, but this 

 particular wood-boring larva has a strange 

 history. 



The matured larva was given to the writer 

 and placed in a box to complete its develop- 

 ment. It pupated in about two weeks and in 

 a few days the adult beetle emerged. It was 

 Ehuria quadrigeminate Say, a longicorn com- 

 monly known as the honey-locust borer, and is 

 recorded as developing in hickory, ash and 

 honey locust. 



Mrs. Doe, who owns the book-case, is certain 

 that the board in which the grub fed and 

 grew from egg to a matured larva is no less 

 than forty years old, as the book-case has been 

 in the possession of the Does for at least that 

 many years. 



Just how and why this creature should have 

 spent so many years in this humdrum life 

 between the narrow walls of a thoroughly 

 seasoned birch board only five eighths of an 

 inch thick, and never once coming out for 

 air or water seems remarkable indeed. 



Mr. .1. MciNeil, writing in the American 

 Naturalist,''- tells of two longicorns of this 

 same species emerging from an ash door-sill 

 that had been in place nineteen years. In 

 that case the relation of the tunnels to the 

 solid brick wall on which the door-sill rested 

 seems to have made it certain that the eggs 

 were laid in the wood before the house was 

 built. This case seems to outstrip any known 

 insect record in point of longevity. 



H. E. Jaques 



Iowa Wesleyan College, 

 Mt. Pleasant, Iowa 



QUOTATIONS 



THE COST OF PRINTING SCIENTIFIC WORKS 

 IN ENGLAND 



Officers of learned societies and libra- 

 rians have made public a memorandum 

 planned to impress on the printing and pub- 

 lishing firms of the United KJingdom the 

 danger which they are incurring by enforcing 

 the recent enormous increase in the price of 

 books, more especially books of the more se- 

 rious and specialized sort. They say: 



It is not only to the public detriment, but clearly 

 also to the detriment of the printing and pub- 

 lishing trades, that learned societies should be 

 forced to cut down or suspend altogether their 

 output of proceedings and monographs, and that 

 libraries should have to reduce to a minimum the 

 number of books which they purchase. It is ob- 

 vious that if books are bought in ever-decreasing 

 numbers, publishers will find it useless to print 

 anything, however valuable, which does not ap- 

 peal to the unlearned public. And if societies are 



1 Vol. XX., p. 1055. 



