74 



THE COCO-NUT 



CHAP. 



one mark (36 cents) for every twenty beetles and the same for 

 every fifty grubs. Seventeen days later a law was promulgated 

 stopping coco-nut planting, ordering the cleaning up of all 

 existing plantations, forbidding the using of coco-nut trunks 

 for bridges and pig-styes, and arranging for inspections. About 

 £2000 was the cost of this method of dealing with the pest up 

 to the end of January 1912, and yet no satisfactory impression 

 had been made on its numbers. Therefore on the 1st of 

 February 1912, it was made compulsory to search for and 

 destroy the insect. Following this there was issued on April 

 19 th, 1912, a decree calling into being a commission with 

 powers to inspect and compel owners of coco-nuts to keep their 

 estates clean, and to remove structures made of coco -nut 

 trunks, or standing dead trees, at the owner's expense. Then 

 on the 10th of May 1912 appeared an order requiring all able- 

 bodied persons in the affected districts to turn out at six o'clock 

 on every Wednesday to search for beetles and grubs, which 

 were to be brought to the village headmen, counted and 

 destroyed by fire or hot water. Into this great holocaust 

 passed the grubs of beetles which happen to be similar to those 

 of Oryctes. Friederichs names them specifically ; but their 

 number is a matter for estimation. From the 1st of April 

 1912 to the 31st of March 1913, roughly, ten million grubs 

 and a quarter of a million beetles were collected and killed on 

 the island of Upolu ; allowing for the grubs of the similar 

 beetles, Friederichs puts down the Oryctes larvae destroyed as 

 six million and the beetles as two hundred thousand — a nice 

 little family originating in a few grubs imported in 1910 or 

 possibly 1909. 



To this figure has yet to be added the number of the grubs 

 and beetles collected on the European Plantations. On the 

 estate of the Deutsche Handels- und Plantagen-Gesellschaft 

 der Sudsee-Inseln zu Hamburg over the same period were 

 collected and destroyed about 350,000 grubs and 23,200 beetles. 

 Further, the number of insects trapped by the Commission over 

 the same period was 180,000 eggs, 776,000 grubs, 220 pupae, 

 and 11,300 beetles. 



A plant pathologist was secured from Germany, 

 particularly to fight this beetle, and a considerable force 

 has been employed in the campaign, both by the 

 Government and the leading plantation company. 

 Almost every method has been employed, and these 

 are fully described and discussed in Friederichs' paper. 



