Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. TUESDAY, JULY 28, 1908. THE GRAIN MOTH.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43354, 28 July 1908, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

TUESDAY, JULY 28, 1908. THE GRAIN MOTH.

This above all —to thine own self be true, \nd it must follow as the night the day Ihou canst not then be false to any man Shakespeare.

At the quarterly meeting of the Chamber of Commerce last week a letter was received from Mr B. Kent urging that body to take adequate means to protect our grain growing industry from the threatened invasion of the American grain-moth. It will be remembered that only recently a shipment of maize was discharged and dispatched to its importers, and that the local authorities were unable to interfere owing to this particular pest not being among the undesirable arrivals specified in the Agricultural Department’s schedule. Since then, however, the authorities have been accorded the power to send infected shipments to the freezing chamber, by way of seeing what the application of extreme cold will accomplish. It need hardly be pointed out, to the agriculturalist at least, that such a purely experimental measure as this is by no means what the position demands. The law in regard to agricultural pests cries aloud for amendment. That the inspectors should be rigidly tied down to the pests stipulated in the sche'dule, and forbiduen to do more than try a change of temperature on the dangerohs and Indv arrivals, whose invasion of our Domimm will prove so ruinous, once they get a hold, is absurd These gentlemen should be accorded a wide margin of discretionary power, so that if the grub or fly applying for acclimatisation happened not to be named on the department’s list, they would still have the right to hold over the shipment in which it arrived, pending directions from head- 1 quarters. To us Mr Kent’s sug- \ gestion offered to the members of the i Chamber of Commerce seems not a < whit too drastic, namely that the 1 infested shipments should bb con- 1 signed to the destruc’or. ■ i Specimens of the grain m)th have j been placey before us for inspection, » and the creature appears one which i would be extremely difficult of ] extermination. Its presence in the ] maize is evidenced by a mere pin- ‘ prick in the surface of the hard [,

grain, and when this is opened the, full fledged moth is seen. The pest of course arrives here in the various, stages represented by the grub, chrysalis, and moth. The chemicals requisite for its' extermination are expensive, and the pesjus catholic in its fancy for the various kinds of grain, wheat and maize being its special preference. This is . one of those questions upon which 'agriculturalists should make some pressing appeal to Government for the enactment of a more efficient law. It is no salis-

faction to them that while many things are scheduled, pests which the inspectors have never seen, which they would not know were they to see them, such a dangerous creature as the grain- moth should be admitted on the recommendation of there being ho local record against it.

In any case farmers will do well to ascertain which importing firms are refusing to accept pest infected grain, anrl combine to bestow their patronage only, upon those firms, who are defending their wellbeing.