SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
most serious pests have not yet found footing in Australia, we have 
cogent reasons for devoting so much attention to entomological work 
undertaken in other countries. I do not kiow of any general analysis 
of our injurious insects. In the United States of America considerably 
more than half are exotic. In New Zealand (N.Z. Jour. Se. & Tech., 
July, 1919) Miller has classified the insect pests according to country of 
origin as follows:—New Zealand, 20 per cent.; European, 66 per cent.; 
Australian, 9 per cent.; North American, 2 per cent.; South African, 
1 per cent.; Pacific, 1 per cent.; and according to habitat as fol- 
‘lows:—Noxious on live stock and man, 22 per cent.; orchard 
pests, 27 per cent.; stored products and household goods, 20 per 
cent.; field and vegetable crops, 20 per cent.; and 10 per cent. 
undistributed. An analysis of Australian noxious insects would, no 
doubt, be somewhat similar to this. These preliminary surveys, with 
the losses caused by such pests, are of great value, as they provide the 
only means by which we can view in proper perspective the relative 
importance of the many -projects requiring investigation, to prevent 
undue prominence and attention being given to minor problems which, 
presented individually, may appear to be of great importance from a 
local point of view, or for a single State, but which, in the federal 
scheme, may be reduced to positions of less significance. 
In the past, some of the problems selected for investigation have been 
those which were apparently of great economic importance, e.g., con- 
trol of the Cattle Tick and the Sheep Blowfly, the search for the vector 
of the nodule-producing worm in cattle. These along with other 
problems, whether entomological only or general biological questions, 
should now be examined comparatively and their relative importance 
estimated, so that a well-balanced scheme of investigation can be 
prepared. 
In such. a programme, investigation at present in progress on the 
propagation of a few parasites of the Sheep Blowfly in Queensland 
and New South Wales will probably be greatly extended, and the 
_ question of importing other parasites will receive due consideration. 
What has already been done in Australia will have to be thoroughly 
summarized, and the causes for such poor results being obtained with 
methods that have proved successful with all manner of pests in many 
other countries will have to receive the most searching examination by ~ 
well-trained biologists. 
The work that Australia has probably taken most interest in was 
that in reference to fruit flies. The most universally distributed fruit 
fly is the so-called Mediterranean Fruit Fly (Ceratitis capitata Wied.) 
_while another in New South Wales and Queensland is iByin Tryoni. 
These belong to the family Trypaneide of the order Diptera. Ceratitis 
capitata was first recorded in Australia in 1897, almost simultaneously 
in New South Wales and Western ‘Australia. It was the Western 
Australian Government that first took alarm at the destruction caused 
‘by C. capitata, and sent their entomologist, Mr. George Compere, on ~ 
several trips abroad in search of natural parasites, for introduction 
into Australia. The first trip was through the Philippines, China, 
- Japan, California, and Europe. He did not find any parasites of the 
Mediterranean Fruit Fly, but found some of Codling Moth. He made 
other trips,from 4904 to 1907 to Ceylon, and India, and Brazil. From 
AC ie 
