THE MEDITERRANEAN FRUIT PLY, 31 



Other host fruits, wild or escaped, are not so generally distributed. 

 As a few of the many examples, there may be mentioned a grove of 

 ball kamani trees in an isolated valley on the Island of Molokai, 

 gulches overgrown with the passion vine and the damson plum on 

 the island of Maui, the thickets of winged kamani growing along the 

 windward shores of the island of Oahu, and the wild coffee in the 

 forests of Oahu and Hawaii. 



In addition to the wild fruits in country places, the fruit fly finds 

 strongholds in the many, and often isolated, native home sites scat- 

 tered throughout the coastal region. About these may be growing 

 the mango, rose apple, orange, peach, ball and winged kamanis, etc. 

 The Kona district of Hawaii has large areas containing thousands of 

 acres of coffee under cultivation in which the fruit fly finds food at 

 all seasons of the year, because of the uneven ripening of the crops 

 due to the varying altitudes at which coffee is grown. 



CLEAN CULTURE A FAILURE IN HAWAII. 



Clean culture in its broadest sense includes not only the detection, 

 collection, and destruction of all infested fruits, but also the elimi- 

 nation of useless or unnecessary host vegetation. In some one or all 

 of its phases it has been recommended and practiced in every coun- 

 try where the fruit fly is a pest, but in nearly all of these the apparent 

 indifference displayed by the majority of the people, no matter how 

 much they may have lamented their losses, has rendered clean culture 

 inefficient. 



The clean-culture campaign instituted by the Hawaiian board of agri- 

 culture during the fall of 1911 and continued by the Federal Bureau 

 of Entomology from October, 1912, until April, 1914, was a failure from 

 the very start in that it did not protect fruits from attack. There were 

 minor contributory causes, but the main reason for failure was the 

 insurmountable difficulties placed in the way of success by territorial 

 legislation, adverse host and climatic conditions, and the lack of any 

 commercially grown crop worth protecting. This method of control 

 proved hopeless after the first few months' trial from the stand- 

 point of alleviating the Hawaiian situation, and while the destruction 

 of fruit was encouraged, in the absence of a better plan for lessening 

 the opportunities for spread of the pest to the coast by means of 

 infested fruits carried on board ships sailing from Honolulu, it has 

 since been discontinued. 



It is doubtful if any clean-culture campaign against the fruit fly 

 has ever been organized so efficiently or on so large a scale as was 

 that organized by the Hawaiian board to include Honolulu. That 

 this method should prove a failure under Hawaiian conditions is no 

 reflection upon the ability of those directly in charge of the work. 

 The law prohibited inspectors from gathering and destroying the 



