THE HEMP INDUSTRY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1359, 11 February 1915, Page 3

THE HEMP INDUSTRY.

Xautborhcc is the scientific name of a most destructive moth which attacks growing flax. The (lax leaf is punched through, as it were, by the moth, thus breaking the length of the fibre. In an article describing this comparatively newly-discovered pest, Mr A, Cockayne, Government Entomologist, says that until quite recently it was thought hj 7 many people that the damage was done by the native slug, an animal that is abundant in all flax swamps. Indeed, Mr T. W. Kirk and Mr Cockayne, in an article on the diseases of flax, definitely stated that the Injury was caused by this slug. “Their presence in large numbers on affected leaves led to this supposition,” writes Mr Cockayne, “but I always iuclined to the opinion that it did not do any injury, but fed entirely on decaying matter at the bases of the plants.” Now he is convinced that it is the grub of the moth Xanthorhoe Praefectata that causes the mischief, and it is highly probable, he holds, that “the almost total destruction of the insect-eating water fowl and swamp birds formerly so abundant in the flax areas kept down the spread of Xanthorhoe to a large extent.”