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INSECT PESTS OF DATES AND THE DATE PALM IN MESOPOTAfflA 



AND ELSEWHERE. 



By P. A. Buxton, M.A., RE.S., 



Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge ; formerly Entomologist, 

 Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force. 



(Plate VIII). 



In the summer of 1918, there was every prospect of an unusually good crop of 

 dates in Mesopotamia, until the month of June, when a large number of the half- 

 grown dates suddenly became " hashaf " — an Arabic word signifying that they 

 dried up and fell from the trees. This was a very serious matter, not only because 

 the date is the principal resource of the country, but also because any and every 

 disaster was at that time attributed by a section of the population to the British 

 administration. At the end of July I was lent to the Directorate of Agriculture 

 to carry out an investigation upon the failure of the date crop. I found that the 

 principal pest, the larva of a Gelechiid moth, had finished its work, and had wan- 

 dered away from the palms to pupate ; and though I was unable to solve the prob- 

 lem of its life-history, I had the good fortune to discover a good deal that was new 

 about the insect pests of the date palm. At the time I pubHshed a report (1918), 

 to which I only refer now in order to say that it was produced on the spot and without 

 access to any books ; it contains certain inaccuracies, and anything of value which 

 I may have discovered wiU be found in the present paper. During the course of 

 my investigations I visited all the important date-growing areas of Mesopotamia, 

 that is to say, Baghdad and its neighbourhood, the Diyala River from Ba'qubah 

 to the Persian Frontier at Baba Pillawi, Mendali and Balad Ruz, Basra and the 

 country round it, Mohammerah and Fao, the Lower Euphrates from Nasiriyeh 

 to Suq-ash-Shuyukh, Qurnah and Amara. At the time of my visit the fruit was 

 nearly ripe, so that it was not difficult to learn the distinctions between the different 

 varieties of date palms, a point of great importance in view of the fact that they 

 are liable to the various pests in varying degrees. I strongly recommend future 

 investigators to famiharize themselves thoroughly with these varieties, and also 

 with the very considerable number of Arabic words which are used specially for 

 the date palm and its cultivation. This is no small task, as v.ill be realized when 

 I mention that in Mesopotamia about 70 words are emploj^ed by the peasants for 

 various parts of the date palm ; the vocabulary relating to cultivation and methods 

 of employment is just as extensive. 



The literature relating to the pests of the date is so scattered, some of it in the 

 most obscure periodicals, that I believe this paper will meet a want. My aim 

 in writing it has been to deal with the pests observed in Meopotamia, but to give 

 at the same time a summary of all that has been wiitten up till the present time, 

 and a full bibliography. From the bibliography I have excluded all purely popular 

 references to well-known pests, all reports, etc., which merely record the presence 

 of one of these pests in some place in which it is well known to occur, and papers 

 relating solely to the systematics of the pests. 

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