THE PARASITE HUNTER.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1747, 30 August 1905, Page 17

THE PARASITE HUNTER.

11GKHTING FEISTS WITH LIVING CREATURES.

He had just arrived in London from Brazil, and was off next day to the (Antipodes. I found him in the office ©f the Agent-General for Western Australia. He was carrying a little box, £ obtaining a few commonplace-looking eetles. Yet to find those beetles he had travelled fifteen thousand miles,, and had searched far and wide.

For the bronzed and hardy traveller follows the least known profession on earth, that of the parasite hunter. What is a parasite hunter? ‘T am a tracker down of the natural cures for the insect pests that are doing damage, costing hundreds of millions every year,” said Mr Compere, in answer to my questions. “Every country lias its different- plagues. The San Jose scale sweeps orange plantation hare; the Codlin moth does damage among apples in America alone to the value of seventy-five million dollars a year. In the Southern States the boll Weevil threatens the cotton crop, and iby the. damage it did helped to make the shortage in cotton that closed Lancashire mills not long ago. FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS.

“How do these pests come? Here London affords you the simplest illustration. lviillions of insects are carried into England every day in the merchandise that arrives from abroad, some in the sackings of Eastern cargoes, some in the dreid foliage around tropical produce. At any time one of these Strange insects, carried here in such fashion, might find that the- English climate suited it, and that one of your native products (possibly wheat) supplied it with a suitable food. If there were nothing to counteract it, it would in a few years spread all over Ehgland, breeding in great numbers several times a year. Before many had quite realised what was the matter, your wheat crop would be ruined.

“This is not an extravagant illustration, The same thing has happened, in other lands, many times over. What, in such case, could you do? "The old cure still largely adopted, is to attempt to destroy the .eggs of the insect, and to fight it by fumigations and dressings of various kinds. The ‘paraffin brigade/ $s I call it, has many adherents, iiut its method is not really effectual, for if you leave only a few of the pests behind you may have .all your trouble over again.

“Some of us in California thought out a different plan. We were impressed by the fact that the same insect which ruins the whole countryside in one land does no appreciable damage In another land. Why is this? We found on examination that the pest of one land is kept in check;' 7 in its native homo by a parasitic insect that preys on it. The reasonable method of attack seemed to 'be not to try to kill your pest by paraffin, but to breed the tival insects that would kill it. “On these lines I have been working for some years. At first my work was done under the direction of the State of California. Then the Government of Western Australia commissioned me, and my recent work has been clone for both these States in conjunction. Thus I represent the Anglo-American Alliance mmy own person. It seems that your Home Government has left enterprise here to one of your outer parts, for when I went to your Government institutions in London to learn what they were doing along the same lines they looked at me with amazement, as though the idea of fighting living creatures with living creatures had never occurred to them. Yet Ehgland has the blight on her hops and the pests that ruin her orchards, like elsewhere. “For some years my work has taken me to every land. Now lam in Spain, now in China, now in the heart of France, now in Central America. 1 am never ill, even with fevers, and on my travels drink nothing but water. My method is this: When seeking an antidote-I first find the native home of the pest I wish to attack. Then I go there, get into the country, and examine. I watch the same pest there (where it is probably doing scarcely any damage), and I am almost sure to find that at some stage of its life another insect attacks and destroys it. Then I have found what I wanted —my parasite —and I take it away with me and breed it to fight the pest. MOTH EATEN BY WASPS.

“Naturally, difficulties sometimes crop up. When farmers see a stranger, wtho cannot speak a word of their language, poking about their grounds, they are apt to be suspicious. The iFrench peasants are the worst I know in that way, and bare a firm belief that every inquiring Visitor is seeking to take from them their secrets of suooess. Sometimes religious scruples hinder me. Thus I once found an insect I had been looking for on a small tree in a Chinaman’s garden. But the Chinaman would not sell the tree on any terms owing to some ancestral or religious objection. I had to hare it, but there was no overcoming the man’s objections. I carried rt away in the end—don’t ask bow. “Some time aeo I was making in-

vestigations in Spain, when I noticed some Codlin moths on apple trees there. The Codlin, as I told you, does widespread harm to American apples. The Spanish farmers told me, however, that it did no harm to their orchards. It came on me like a flash that I would here discover the parasite for the moth. After some investigation, 1 found one particular kind of wasp which 1 lived off the moth and kept it down. I secured specimens, and the wasp is being bred in America now, to destroy • the moth there. j “Every pest has its pdrasite, and the right way to fight pests is through their parasites. Western Australia is setting the Avay here in practical fruit culture and farming, and others will benefit from its work.” —“Daily Mail.”