Nov.  i,  1892.] 
THE  TROPICAL  AGRICULTURIST. 
3i3 
THE  AGRICULTURAL  PESTS  OP  INDIA. 
Considerable  attention  ha9  been  directed  lately  to 
agricultural  pests  of  all  kinds,  and  especially  to  insect 
pests,  in  various  oountnes.  because  the  injuries  occa- 
sioned to  crops  by  their  agency  have  greatly  increased, 
and  in  some  instances  altogether  new  disorders  and 
diseases  attributable  to  them  have  appeared. 
The  universal  international  exchange  of  agricultural 
produce  and  other  commodities  has  tended  and  must 
tend  to  distribute  insects,  fungi,  and  other  sources 
of  evil  to  mankind,  animals,  and  plants,  throughout  the 
world.  Thus  the  terrible  scourge  of  the  vine,  the 
Phylloxera  vastatrix,  was  first  introduced  into  the 
French  vineyards  with  plants,  or  cuttings,  of 
vines  imported  from  the  United  States.  Very 
many  insects  most  noxious  to  agricultural, 
fruit,  and  garden  crops  in  the  United  States 
were  brought  there  with  plants,  cuttmgs,  fruits, 
and  Beeds.  The  elm-leaf  beetle,  Galeruca  xan- 
thomelama,  whioh  is  now  seriously  damaging  elm 
trees,  w..s  not  known  in  the  United  States  until  1837, 
auu  came  probably  from  France,  or  Germany,  where 
it  had  been  a troublesome  pest  long  before  that  date. 
The  hop  fly,  Aphis  humuli,  called  the  “barometer  of 
poverty,”  by  a Kentish  historian  of  hop  culture,  has 
only  recently  visited  the  hop  plantations  of  America; 
yet  it  caused  almost  a total  blight  last  year  in  those 
of  the  Eastern  States,  upou  en  area  of  nearly  40,000 
acres.  Without  any  doubt  this  insect  was  conveyed 
from  Eugland  in  “hop  sets.”  The  Hessian  fly  has 
been  conveyed  to  Great  Britain  by  some  means  or 
other  not  yet  discovered,  during  the  last  year,  and 
bids  fair  to  be  a dangerous  and  permanent  scourge 
to  the  wheat  and  oat  crops  of  this  country. 
It  is  the  same  with  moulds,  or  mildews,  or  “ blights,” 
occasioned  by  fungi.  The  vine  mildew,  Oidium  tuckerii, 
was  not  dreamed  of  in  France  until  1845.  The  potato 
mould,  Peronospora  in/estans,  had  shown  no  important 
sign  in  Great  Britain  until  1844.  The  coffee  mildew, 
Remileia  vastatrix,  did  not  serious  harm  in  the  coffee 
plantations  of  Ceylon  until  after  1870 ; but  during  the 
last  ten  years  it  has  enormously  decreased  their 
yield. 
Diseases  of  animals  have  also  been  greatly  inten- 
sified during  the  past  thirty  years  in  Great  Britain 
and  in  other  countries.  In  India,  as  we  gather  from 
this  little  book  of  Surgeon-General  Balfour,  anthrax, 
pleuro-pneumonia,  rinderpest,  foot-and-mouth  disease, 
are  so  rampant  that  the  Madras  Government  has 
recently  appointed  an  inspector  of  cattle  diseases  with 
a sufficient  staff  under  him. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  attacks  of  certain  in- 
sects and  parasitic  fungi  are  more  frequent  and 
more  fatal  than  formerly.  Hop  blights  from  aphides 
and  mildew,  8pce,ctheca  castanei,  are  far  more  com- 
mon and  destructive  , in  England  than  they  were  fifty 
years  back  ; and  the  orange-growers  of  Florida, 
California,  and  other  places  where  oranges  are  culti- 
vated, are  at  their  wits’  end  to  combat  the  ravages 
of  scale  insects,  CoccidiB,  which  have  greatly  increased 
since  1870. 
It  is  a moot  point  as  to  whether  this  is  due,  or  not, 
to  modern  and  more  artificial  systems  of  cultivation, 
which  may  be  more  favourable  to  the  spread  of  insects 
and  parasitic  fungi.  Or  it  may  be  that  these 
new  systems  interfere  with  the  balance  of 
Nature  by  decreasing  parasitic  and  other  insects, 
and  birds  and  other  animals,  which  are  the  natural 
foes  of  injurious  insects.  It  has  been  discovered 
by  Brof.  Forbes,  of  Illinois,  that  several  species  of 
the  Carabidse  and  Coccinellidae  eat  the  spores  of 
fungi ; therefore  an  unusual  increase  in  the  number 
of  birds,  or  other  foes  of  these  insects,  might  oc- 
casion a serious  spread  of  mildews. 
The  importance  of  the  subject  of  agricultural 
pests  cannot  be  overrated.  It  is  now  fully  recog- 
nized by  the  Government  of  the  United  States 
who  have  a distinguished  entomologist  upon  the 
staff  of  the  National  Agricultural  Department.  Besides 
this,  many  of  the  States  have  their  own  entomologists, 
who  furnish  frequent  and  valuable  reports  and 
advice  as  to  methods  of  treatment.  In  England  the 
Agricultural  Department  of  the  Privy  Council  have 
lately  issued  a series  of  reports  upon  insects  injurious 
40 
lo  crops,  written  by  Mr.  Charles  Whitehead;  and 
Miss  Ormerod,  the  entomologist  of  the  Royal  Agricul- 
tural Society,  has  published  annual  reports  for  op- 
wards  of  ten  years,  whioh  have  been  of  the  utmost 
valne  and  practical  benefit  to  agriculturists.  And 
in  India,  as  Surgeon-General  Balfour  tells  us  in  this 
work,  the  serious  injuries  caused  by  insects  and  other 
animals,  fungi,  and  bacilli,  to  mankind,  animals  and 
plants,  have  at  last  attracted  the  attention  of  tho 
Government  of  India,  and  it  is  proposed  to  invite 
communications  from  those  engaged  in  agriculture, 
forestry,  and  horticulture  in  that  country,  to  fnrnish 
matter  for  periodical  reports  like  those  issued  from 
time  to  time  by  Miss  Ormerod,  These  would  of 
course  be  published  in  the  vernacular  and  should  he 
illustrated  by  woodcuts,  as  Miss  Ormerod  suggests  in 
her  comprehensive  letter  in  the  preface  of  “Agrioul. 
tural  Pests  of  India.”  It  is  much  to  be  hoped  that 
a competent  entomologist  may  be  appointed  in  India 
to  direct  this  work. 
Surgeon- General  Balfour,  so  far  back  as  1880,  re- 
commended the  Secretary  of  State  for  India  to  obtain 
reports  on  the  diseases  of  cattle  and  plants,  and  on 
creatures  noxious  to  mankind  and  vegetation.  In  his 
admirable  “ Cycloyaedia  of  India  and  of  Eastern  and 
Southern  Asia,”  published  in  1885,  he  gave  a general 
view  of  the  entomology  of  these  regions,  and  described 
the  losses  sustained  by  agriculturists  from  these  and 
similar  causes.  He  has  followed  this  up  with  the  work 
now  under  review. 
Though  a small  book,  the  “Agricultural  Pests  of 
India  ” is  very  ambitious  in  design,  as  it  treats  not 
only  of  insects  and  fungi  and  animals  injurious  to 
mankind  and  agricultural  crops,  but  of  all  manner 
of  birds,  beasts,  and  fishes.  Several  of  these  cannot, 
even^by  the  greatest  stretch  of  the  imagination,  be 
classified  as  pests  to  agriculture,  and  seem  to  be  alto- 
gether out  of  place  in  this  category.  Under  the  head- 
ing “Fish,”  sharks  and  siluroids  are  described,  though 
it  is  not  by  any  means  clear  in  what  way  they  are 
agricultural  pests,'  except,  perhaps,  that  they  might 
bite  off  the  limbs  of  unwary  agriculturists  disporting 
in  the  sea.  The  book  should  have  been  styled  the 
“Natural  History  of  India,”  or  “A  Manual  ofthe 
Natural  History  of  India,”  rather  than  the  “ Agri- 
cultural Busts  of  India.”  But  the  fact  that  rather 
too  man)  subjects  are  dealt  with  cannot  be  held 
to  be  a very  serious  fault  in  a compilation  contain- 
ing an  immense  amount  of  serviceable  information 
arranged  alphabetically,  together  with  a good  index ; 
so  that  any  head  can  be  quickly  found.  The  author 
had  great  opportunities  of  acquiring  knowledge  of 
the  branches  of  natural  history  he  has  here  discussed 
while  he  was  engaged  in  forming  the  Government 
Central  Museum  at  Madras,  and  other  Museums  in 
various  parts  of  India  as  well  as  in  the  preparation 
of  “ The  Cyclopasdia  of  India  ” and  his  work  on 
“ The  Timber  Trees  of  India.”  He  was  therefore 
very  well  qualified  to  prepare  this  manual  or  dictionary 
of  natural  history,  which  will  serve  to  show  Indian 
agriculturists  what  are  the  principal  foes  of  their  crops 
and  herds.  No  remedies  or  methods  of  prevention 
are  given  in  detail.  Some  general  instructions  appear 
in  the  introductory  chapters,  such  as  to  farm  cleanly, 
and  to  use  certain  washes  and  powders  in  case  of 
the  attack  of  some  insects.  These,  however,  have 
evidently  been  taken  from  lists  of  remedies  prescribed 
by  American  and  English  practical  entomologists,  and 
have  not  been  actually  tried  in  India.  Now  that 
Surgeon-General  Balfour  has  demonstrated  the 
dangers,  and  indicated  general  remedies  which  have 
been  found  advantageous  in  other  climes,  the  farmers, 
the  foresters,  and  fruit-growers  of  India  should  at 
once  make  experiments,  and  prove  for  themselves 
whether  these  are  as  efficacious  in  the  fiery  heat  of 
the  East  as  in  the  temperate  climates  of  Great 
Britain  and  America. 
This  notice  cannot  be  concluded  without  an  allusion 
to  some  ofthe  errors  which  have  been  carelessly  allowed 
to  remain  in  the  book,  having  evidently  escaped  the 
notice  of  the  eminent  scientific  man  who  “revised 
nearly  the  whole  in  manuscript,  and  the  proofs  as 
they  passed  through  the  press.”  It  is  not  to  be  ex- 
pected that  Surgeon-General  Balfour  should  be  a 
skilled  entomologist,  Jjut  it  ia  very  unfortunate  for 
