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LOCUSTS IN THE VILAYET OF ALEPPO, SYRIA. 
The following consular dispatch from Mr. E. Bissinger, United States 
consul at Beirut, transmitted by the Department of State to the Secre- 
tary of Agriculture, possesses considerable interest as indicating still 
further the prevalence of locusts all over the locust areas of the world 
during 1890 and 1891: 
The province of Aleppo has not only been infested with the cholera, but invaded 
by locusts as well, as will be observed from the following brief report, based upon 
information from United States Consular Agent F. Poche, in Aleppo, which, in the 
abstract, is as follows: 
The spring rains failed us this year in the vilayet of Aleppo, and in the mutessar_ 
rifiate of ‘‘ Deir-el-Zor,” and as the locusts did not find sufficient nourishment they 
invaded wheat, bariey, cotton and sesame fields, sparing neither; nor did meadows, 
trees, or vegetable gardens escape these voracious creatures. In one word, there is 
desolation everywhere. Cotton and sesame fields are almost entirely destroyed, 
while wheat will barely yield one-half, and barley scarcely a third of the average 
yearly crops. 
The evil could, in all probability, have been prevented, to a certain extent at least, 
had the measures usually adopted, been employed in time. These consist of— 
I. The plowing of the ground about the middle of July in those localities where 
the locusts are known to have deposited their eggs. 
II. The buying up, beginning of this period to the time of their hatching, of all 
the eggs deposited. 
II. Collecting and burying the locusts; this to be done from the time of hatching 
until able to fly. 
By honestly and intelligently employing the funds designated for this purpose, the 
gravity of the situation might have been greatly diminished, even if the evil could 
not have been entirely abated; as itis, the £2,000, voted by the State, and the 
£3,000, collected from the people, have been lost to the Treasury and to the people, 
as no efforts were made until after the locusts were able to fly and had ravaged ae 
country. 
ANOTHER GOVERNMENT ENTOMOLOGIST APPOINTED. 
Information has reached us of the appointment of our vaiued corre- 
spondent, Mr. A. Sidney Olliff, late assistantin the museum at Sydney, 
to the newly instituted office of entomologist in the Department of Ag- 
riculture of New South Wales. His duties will consist largely in the 
investigation of insects affecting fruits and crops, and in publishing, 
for the benefit of the agriculturist, the results of his studies. 
A CURIOUS BIT OF ENTOMOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION. 
The time-honored joke of the verdict of the English railway guard 
concerning the classification of the ‘’edge-’og as a hinsect” is paral- 
leled by an item from Bell’s Messenger, (London, July 27, 1891), in 
which it is stated that a collection of butterflies, consigned to a high 
legal official in Duisburg, Germany, was detained at the custom-house. 
Upon inquiry the fact was elicited that the customs officials had come 
to the conclusion that, as butterflies have wings, they must be classed 
as poultry, and so be subjected to the same duty. It was only after 
