No. 2. ] Notes. 123 



taken in the work by a large number of correspondents in all parts of 

 India, and specimens and practical reports have been received in large 

 numbers. 



Some success has attended the application of kerosine emulsion in- 

 secticide suggested for the destruction of the Green Coffee Scale insect 

 Lecanium viride in South India, where practical experiments were tried 

 by Mr. R. H. Morris; aud arrangements are being made for having the 

 insecticide apparatus, which has been sent to the Museum by American 

 and English firms, experimented with practically in various parts of 

 India, with a view to the publication of reliable information on the 

 subject. 



The number of Entomological specimens added to the Collections 

 during the year amounts to 17,213, this being the largest number on 

 record. A detailed list of accessions are being published in the Annual 

 Report of the Museum, but the following are worthy of special notice :— 

 the Hemiptera presented by Mr. E. T. Atkinson ; the Hymenoptera, 

 Diptera, and Hemiptera purchased from Mr. W. Doherty ; the Buprestidse 

 presented by Mons. le Capitaine Kerremans ; the Heterocera presented 

 by Colonel Swinhoe ; also the late Dr. ¥. Stoliczka's Yarkand Collections, 

 which were received from Europe, whither they had been sent for exa- 

 mination. 



Besides the general Entomological work, a series of fourteen collec- 

 tions, illustrative of Indian sericulture, were prepared for distribution, 

 through the Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Depart- 

 ment, to various museums and institutions in India and Europe. Mate- 

 rials were also collected for the compilation of a general account of 

 Indian silk-producing insects. Experiments were conducted with a view 

 of elucidating the life-history of the Wheat Weevil. These experiments, 

 which are fully detailed on p. 15 of No. 1 of Indian, Museum Notes, con- 

 firm the theory that the weevil is a purely granary pest, and that grain can 

 therefore be preserved by isolation and other precautions against infec- 

 tion, after it leaves the fields, the hard varieties of wheat being easily 

 protected ; while in the case of the soft varieties which offer less resist- 

 ance to attack, protection from infection, though possible, is a matter of 

 considerable difficulty. 



Experimental rearing was attempted, with some success, in the cases 

 of many of the insects sent to the Museum as injurious to crops, various 

 stages in their growth being thus observed and preserved for future re- 

 ference in the Museum. 



A cross between the Desl silkworm of Bengal and the European 

 Hombyx mori was reared experimentally, in the hot weather of 1888, from 

 some remarkably fine stock bred by Mr. J. Cleg horn. The results 

 seemed promising at the first, but the insects rapidly deteriorated, the 

 mortality being so great in the third generation that the experiment was 



