INSECT RAVAGES.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 117, 21 January 1926, Page 3

INSECT RAVAGES.

WHAT THEY COST. The organisation of research throughout the Empire formed the subject of the instructive presidential address which Sir Thomas Holland, F.R.S., delivered to the Royal Society of Arts.* * a--Vcry little, lie said, was done in prewar days, although the year 1902 saw the establishment of the National Physical Laboratory and the founding of the British Cotton Growing Association. A few months’ warfare, however, showed that our inability to manufacture many essential munitions was due to a neglect of applied science in peace time. It also showed that the isolated instances of private enterprise in this direction necessarily left many vital gaps in the programme of scientific work, and further, that some system of wider co-ordination was necessary if the Empire were to be made relatively self-cont: Lied. This conviction led to the establishment of the department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which now disbursed half a million annually. Much more than this sum could, Sir Thomas said, be economically expanded were the funds forthcoming, but progress was limited by various difficulties which only time would remove. Among other things, research workers could not be manufactured by mass production. Only a fraction of those who received scientific education were suitable for the work. The setting up of the Advisory Council on Research in 1915 was followed by the suggestion which originated in Australia, that the scheme should be extended and made applicable to the Empire as a whole. Central authorities were accordingly established in the I Dominions and in I dia, and before the reaction of peace and the subsequent economic depression ensued, separate Imperial bureaux had been founded to deal with minerals and mycology, and there was already in existence one dealing with entomology.

Sir Thomas laid special emphasis on the importance to the Empire of this latter study. In the United States alone the loss due to the ravages of the cotton boll weevil were said to ''total up to no less than £40,000,000 sterling in 1921, and in the same year the pink boll worm in Egypt caused a loss of £40,000,000. Blood-sucking insects were, moreover, responsible for the dissemination of various diseases, both of animals and men. The epi- , demic of sleeping sickness due to the tsetse fly some twenty years ago killed off about 40 per cent, of the i>opulation of Uganda, and the effect on cattle was even more devastating. The mosquito w T as responsible for a large proportion of the four to five million deaths annually ascribed to fever in India. On the other hand, certain insects -were of great economic value. The product of the lac insect in India was valued at £7,000,000 annually, whilst the output of silk in Japan had a value of ove: £60,000,000 per annum. The work of the Imperial Bureau of Entomology at Kensington was largely taken up with the identification of specimens, and in the distribution of p.-.asites likely to be destructive to insect pests. Its total income was, however, only about £II,BOO, which might be compared with the £500,000 devoted to the same study in the United States Department of Agriculture.—Engineering.