BLACKBERRY PEST.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 April 1926, Page 3

BLACKBERRY PEST.

A REMEDY SOUGHT. SAN FRANCISCO, March 24. Americans, and particularly Californians, have been greatly interested in the curious mission of Dr IL J. Tillyard, F.R.S., who has arrived in California from New Zealand in search of an insect to drive the blackberries .out of New Zealand. This scientist journeyed to Sacramento, the capital city of California, and there conferred with Dr G. H. Hecke, the State Director of Agriculture, to whom he staled that blackberries bad become a veritable pest in New Zealand, even worse than snakes ever were in Ireland in the time of St. Patrick! The Dominion scientist averred that he was not toying with an academic question, hut was engaged in the .solution of a problem involving the life or death of New Zealand agriculture. This at least, was the information given out in Sacramento by the local Press.

The European blackberry, Dr Tillyard explained, was spreading so fast on the North and South Islands of New Zealand that farmers were being literally driven from their lands by tho encroaching bramble. It was added that tho New Zealand Government looked upon control of the blackberry as tlie outstanding agricultural problem confronting it. and the Cawthron Institute of Nelson, New Zealand, had sent Dr Tillyard. the chief of its biological department, abroad in search of an insect enemy of the blackberry with which in combat the menace.

" They say we have only one blackberry on the West Coast of the South Island.” declared Dr Tillyard, “ which means there is a practically solid growth of the bush about 2fK) miles long. Once ibis menace liegins to close in on a stretch of agricultural laud, the farmer is lost unless he can maintain a full-time brush-clearing crew to battle the blackberries. The Government is besieged with appeals for help, and farmers are walking off their land in despair—driven off by the blackberry.” If a suitable insect enemy of the blackberry ran be - found, however, there was reason to believe that the

" bug” will have tho berry on the run in n short time, believed the New Zealand scientist, who stated that a similar feat already was being accomplished in Australia in tho control of the prickly pear cactus, which had occupied 90.000,000 acres, and was spreading at the rate of a million acres a year before insect enemies capable of combating it were employed to check the depredations. " The prickly pear overran many agricultural sections and even towns,” said Dr Tillyard, "before the tide of battle turned. Then one insect, the common cochineal bug. destroyed all of one species of prickly pear in the short space of one year. It refused to attack any other species, and some thirty different insects have been propagated. and these, increasing at an incredible rate, arc mopping up the rest of the prickly pears.”