WAR AGAINST THE LOCUST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21153, 9 April 1932, Page 7 (Supplement)

WAR AGAINST THE LOCUST

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH WORK The French Committee for Locust Research, consisting of entomologists and chiefs of plant protection services in all the French-African Colonies, has agreed to recognise the Imperial Institute of Entomology in London as the intei- i national centre for the collection of data ! on tho appearance and movements of | locust swarms. This decision follows on the locust conference which was held re- , cently in Rome to discuss methods of in- j ternational co-operation in locust research, and which was attended by British, If tench,, and Italian representatives. The Italian j delegates agreed to recognise tho Imperial , Instituto of Entomology as the inter- i national centre for research, but the, ■ French delegates were unable to commit themselves without; referring the mattei j to their locust research committee, which j has now endorsed the decision of the Rome meeting. As a result of the resolution, the Imperial Institute of Enotomology will in future receive automatically all the information on locusts available in tho French-African possessions. This is being regularly transmitted by local authorities to the Algiers Regional Station. French entomologists will also co-operate in the locust, investigations in the Timbuctu area, which British entomologists from Nigeria hope to undertake. This area is strongly suspected to bo one of the original souices of the locust outbreak in Africa. A geuer.il scheme of locust research, which aims at, discovering the locusts' permanent breeding areas, is now in operation and is directed from the Imperial Institute of Entomology. This is financed partly by the British-African Colonies and partly by Ihe Empire Marketing Board, but owing to the need for economy (lie funds available have recently been reduced by half. Two locust research officers have been appointed. One is now in Uganda advising the Government on problems of locust control, and particularly on the failure of poison bait. The other is studying the conditions under which locusts are breeding in the Sudan. Information on the movements of locusts is now being received from sixteen empire and twenty-five foreign countries by the Imperial institute of Entomology and analysed there in order to trace the origin of locust swarms, the routes of their invasions, and the probable causes of the outbreaks. WORLD'S OLDEST CONTINENT. More evidence of Australia's geological antiquity has been discovered by goldminers prospecting in the Iledesdalc district of Victoria. After boring through more than 200 ft. of basalt they struck an old river bed arid some alluvial wash which yielded a little gold. But the greatest interest lay in the water-polished stones brought up, which experts declared had not seen the light for at least a million years. Australia is believed by many to be the world's oldest continent, and some geologists have stated that Mount Kosciusko is tho oldest land surface. Originally joined to Asia and Africa, an upheaval of the earth's crust separated it from the other continents before the evolution of tho carnivora. Some geological formations, particularly in caves, are said to point to an antiquity of | 20,000.000 years. SKELETONS OF DINOSAURS. Barmim Brown, paleontologist of 'the American Museum of natural history, has just mado the largest single find in the history of fossil hunting and unearthed one of tho greatest treasures ever discovered 11v science. Me returned from the west with the skeletons of nine huge dinosaurs, anproximately 80,000.000 years old and each about the size of a rhino-<-"ws. whi'-h he dug up in the Badlands of Montana. Never before have so many of tho giant denizens of the foreworld been uncovered by ono explorer in one excavation. Near Cameron, a little trading post on the Colorado River in Arizona. Brown also discovered interred tho domains of a strange, extremely ancient reptile. In perfect, condition despite the fact that it had lain buried in the rocks for 185,000.000 years, it is tho most nearly complete skele ! ton of that remote age ever found on this continent. The creature, about three feet long, with a skull the width of a man's hand, has some relationship to the alligator.