24 
Psyche 
[March 
quaintance of this excellent work. On the first page, Dr. 
Sweetman writes as follows : 
“The first written record we have of the movement of 
beneficial insects is that of Forskal (1775). He states that 
the date palms in Arabia were attacked by ants, which often 
destroyed the trees. The growers introduced colonies of 
predatory ants annually from the mountains and these con- 
trolled the pest species.” 
Dr. Sweetman is well aware of the practice of using ants 
in pest control in that part of the world, for immediately he 
writes that “the use of ants for the protection of orchards 
from insect pests is a practice of long standing in various 
Asiatic countries, and is still employed today”. To this, 
based upon my personal field data, I quite agree and I can 
add a few more uses of the ants and some other forms of 
biological control of insects as practiced in my country. But 
what concerns us now is the “first written record”. The 
following is a translation of a Chinese record. 
“There are many kinds of ants in Lingnan (South China). 
Sometimes one finds that the ants are carried in a bag and 
sold on the market. The ants are yellow with long legs, 
larger than ordinary ants and live in a nest made from 
leaves and twigs. They are bought for the protection of the 
orange for it is said that without these ants most of these 
fruits would be wormy.” 
This record is contained in a book called Ling Pio Lu Yi or 
Wonders from South China by Liu Shun. There is no way 
to tell when this book was published. We know, however, 
that the author served as an army officer in Kwangtung dur- 
ing the reign of Tsao Chung of Tang (889-903) and the time 
must have been near the end of the 9th or the beginning of 
the 10th century. The same fact was mentioned in “Book 
on Tree Planting” by Yu Tsung Ben, a writer from the Yuan 
Dynasty (1280-1368). Thus Dr. Sweetman will be glad to 
know that the written records of insect control really go 
back much earlier. The ants in question were determined, 
according to the correspondence I have had with Prof. W. E. 
Hoffmann of Lingnan University, Canton, as CEcophylla 
smaragdina Fab. and were determined probably by the late 
Professor Wheeler. Today in Canton nests of these ants 
may be bought for about one silver dollar each. 
