■ , triTH UNCLE SALCS NATURALISTS . 



RELEASE Friday. July 3. 1931 



NOT FOR PUBLICATION 



Speaking Time t 10 Minutes 



ANNOUNCE^ffiNT ; And now for a little l)it of wild life i Station joins 



with the United States Department of Agriculture in presenting some of the 

 results of hunts into the wild by Uncle Sam's Naturalists. Today we are to 



hear some of the secrets of insects You know, insect pests are not only 



wild but often make us wild Well, J/Ir, ^ildsmaJi? 



It is very inrportaait to IrOiow how insects get around. Wc need to know, 

 so we can got arou^id the insects. That is especially true in the case of 

 some of our big crop pests. Wc need to know how they travel, in order to 

 know how to stop their spread into now territory. 



Some, of ccaxse, crav/l from one field to another. Others fly. There 

 are strong flyers and weak flyers. That sounds simple. You might think it 

 would be easy to pick the long distance flyers by their design and build. 

 You might figure that those with strong raasclos and big wing spread woixld 

 go further on a non-stop flight. 



But you i.rast rcncmbor that some of the flyers hitch-hilffi on the 'jind. 



The Bureau of Entomology specialists liave been working trying to get 

 the facts about insect spread. 



They tried building screens at some hei^t from the ground to catch 

 the insects on the wing. ?or all practical purposes, that only gave infor- 

 mation on conditions within the fields and the first few feet of air above 

 them. 



Of course, you all laiow that as we go higher in the air, the wind 

 often changes. Tno wind a few thousand feet up ma^'- be blowing in an opposite 

 direction from that on tlie ground. Which wind were those insects riding? 



Well, t!:c Bureau of Entomology wont up to find out. Thcj'- started 

 chasing i^.socts oy airplajio. That is, thoy equipped an airplane with a special 

 trap to c-^.tch insects. It was a screen vdth sticlcy stuff on it so arranged 

 that it could bo cx-poscd or shielded at will. In th-^.t w,?^-, the entomologist 

 could fly to r». cort.^in level, and crposc the tr-^p for a certain length of time 

 at that lovol, so as to catch the insects at that level and no other. 



