118 QUEENSLAND AGRICTLTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ava., 1898. 
the old trees and plant early varieties. he fruit fly was a real puzzle, 
however, and for the present he (Mr. Palethorpe) gave it best. He knew 
many growers who got the bottoms of old bottles, and by putting a little 
molasses into these caught a great many flies in the evening, and this system 
appeared to give a fair amount of satisfaction. He knew another man, 
who had not a sign of the fly on his trees, who put carbolic acid in tins under- 
neath them. Of course, they knew that there were often peach-trees in 
certain odd corners which were never touched by the fly. In such spots there 
was evidently something which prevented the fly from coming near the trees. 
He finally concluded by stating that he had a splendid lot of guava-trees 
which he meant next year to cover with mosquito-net. He meant to geta 
good crop of fruit, or know the reason why. 
Mr. W. R. Rozrnson (Toowoomba) endorsed Mr Davidson’s statement 
about the migratory habits of the flying-fox. Mr. Robinson also mentioned the 
native companion, a bird protected by the Native Birds Protection Act, as a 
farmer’s pest, and said in many districts it was a terrible nuisance. He knew 
one man who was destroying them with poisoned corn, which might also be a 
good remedy for coots. 
_ Mr. W. D. Lame (Yangan) said there was another pest not yet 
mentioned, and that was the mice farmers were oftened plagued with. Some- 
times they came like the flies in summer, and in conversation with Mr. Benson 
some time ago, that gentleman had told him he was going to try and get Mr. 
Pound to see if he could not inoculate them with chicken cholera. If this 
could be successfully done, it would confer a great boon on farmers in a good 
many districts. In his own district the flying-foxes were as bad, he 
supposed, as on any part of the Downs, and they had been especially bad last 
summer, although he had not heard of any camps in the district itself. 
Shooting them had not done much good; and as for annoying and 
harassing the foxes as a remedy for getting rid of them, would it not be better 
to find some means of destroying them altogether ? If they were simply made 
to shift from one locality they would only go somewhere else, and annoy other 
people. Where he lived, marsupials had been very bad a few years ago, but 
at present they were not particularly noticeable. In the back country there 
were now plenty of dingoes, and as long as they had dingoes they would not 
be troubled with marsupiais. 
Mr. P. Haceyzacu (Warwick) had had a good deal of experience of the 
flying-fox, and, although he did not live very far from Mr. Lamb, he had known 
camps to be in the district. ‘To keep out wallabies, he had had to put up miles 
and miles of paling fence, and had then not been able to keep them all out, 
but the pest was not now so bad as it used to be. As the scrubs were cleared, 
the wallabies disappeared. Kangaroos were once very numerous up at the 
head of Freestone Creek, but now they had shifted. Dingoes were very 
plentiful up there; and although, as Mr. Lamb had said, they killed a lot of 
marsupials, yet they did a lot of harm themselves, and he thought they could 
be got rid of with great advantage. E 
_ Mr. A. H. Beysow said: Dynamite as a means for the destruction of 
flying-foxes had been tried by the Department of Agriculture in New South 
Wales, but without the slightest results. Bombs, exploded by an electric 
battery, had been tried in the camps, but the foxes had evidently noticed there 
was something wrong in the general state of affairs, and would not go near the 
trees where the bombs were, with the result that not a fox was killed. The 
Government Bacteriologist (Mr. C. J. Pound) had been carrying out a number 
of experiments, with a view towards finding a means of destroying flying- 
foxes with one of the microbes that had been used in the destruction of mice. 
It was a microbe that had been brought to this colony by a gentleman from 
Samoa; but so far, Mr. Pound had not, he believed, got very satisfactory 
results from it. However, he thought if flying-foxes ever were to be properly 
wiped out it would probably be through some disease; and, considering the 
gregarious habits of the flying-fox, an infectious disease, if once introduced 
