kt q 1 ] Miscellaneous Notes, :\7 



During the past year a very large number of reports, many of them 



. _, illustrated by specimens, have been for warded 



Locusts in kohat. ' 



to the Indian Museum irom all parts of 



India, in connection with the locusts which have been so widely pre- 

 valent. With a few unimportant exceptions, these locusts have all be- 

 longed to the species Acrid'mm peregrinum Oliv., which is the chief 

 migratory locust of the whole of Northern Africa and South-Easteni 

 Asia. In the early part of 1891 a detailed report was issued, in which 

 the information collected on the subject of this insect was brought down 

 to the 1st December KS9U. The jnesent number of the Notes contains 

 what has since been ascertained on the subject of its prevalence in 

 Northern Africa, Persia, and Turkish Arabia, also on the subject of 

 the parasites, disease, and other natural enemies that attack ir. The* 

 reports relating" to its presence in India are so numerous that they will 

 take some time to arrange. In the meanwhile we take the liberty to 

 quote the following from Captain C. G. Parson's interesting account 

 of the invasion of the Ivohat district, as it is very typical of what 

 occurred elsewhere. This report is dated 19th June 1891. It was for- 

 warded to the Museum by the Commissioner and Superintendent of the 

 Peshawar Division : — 



" There has been immense opportunity for observing locusts in the Kohat district 

 for about the middle of April the plains of the Kohat Tahsil oecame alive with youn^ 

 ones of the Peregrinum species which marched down from egg-beds which principally 

 lav beyond the border in the lower part of the hills. Great eilorts were m;ide to drive 

 these larvae into trenches, and enormous numbers were destroyed by mere burial in this 

 way, but the insects were too numerous for a thinly populated district to cope with, 

 and they began to appear from all sides. As they got bigger and developed into the 

 sta^e (bright yellow green) antecedent to fledging, vast armies marched directly upon 

 the well wooded station of Kohat. They invaded every quarter of it. They crossed 

 the roads resolutely, swam the water-courses, climbed the walls, filled the compounds* 

 and scaled the trees, palings, walls of houses, and telegraph poles. There was no nook 

 or corner that was not alive with these hoppers, and wherever vegetation was thick it 

 was seething with them. In a very few days the trees begau to thin, and in ten days 

 there were no leaves left anywhere. The station had all the appearance of winter. 

 The gardens were stripped clean, rose bushes, viues, flowers, and every kind of plant 

 being devoured wholesale. Trees with soft hark, and supple bushes, were so damaged 

 that their stems and boughs were skinned. The only tree which the hoppers disliked for 

 food was the " Bakain " or Persian lilac, and these trees have alone remained green, and 

 for some reason the only flower they eschewed was the larkspur. Whether all the trees 

 and bushes will recover or not is a matter of conjecture, but the Shishnm and Mulberry 

 trees ana others are beginning again to shoot. I saw several Farasb (Tamarisk) trees 

 with their trunks red and raw from base to top where they had been stripped of bark. 

 By the way the hoppers swarmed up and remained packed on the telegraph poles ; they 

 appeared to attempt to eat even their dry wood. The station exhaled the most offen- 

 sive odours, for dead or alive the masses of insects stunk. Many of them entered the 

 houses and ate holes in curtains and hangings. It was impossible to keep the rooms 

 free of them. By congregating in one place in this way they they laid themselves 



