The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-10-17
FINISH FIGHT IN PHILIPPINES
 ON LOCUST
Millions of Pesos Damage Is Caused By Pest Feeding on Island Crops.

Manila, Oct. 17-Four hundred municipal districts of various provinces of the Philippines were in fested this year with hugs swarms of locusts, which caused considerable damage to crops and threaten by an other crop season to cut down produc- tion to the value of many millions of pesos. War gases have been tried in vain on the places where they deposit their eggs, and sprays of crude senic poison mixed in molasses spread on sugar cane leaves or stalks have had little more than temporary effect.
 Driven Into Pits.
 In the hopper stage, before the tocusts get wings. they are easily driv- en, like sheep The law requires every man to go out on these drives at the call of the municipal authorities. Pits sheets run out V-shaped from them. Men with sticks then surround the field where the locusts are feeding and drive them into the pits and bury them. Always a sufficient number escape to grow to maturity and lay more eggs than ever, so that even this method of fighting them avails little.
 Use Natural Enemies.
 The mologist at the Bureau of science now proposes to fight them with natural enemies, either other in sects that may be found to feed upon them or bacteria that will spread dis case dIIIOIlS lHeIIl- SIEcu1dES are De1nS sent out to plants and farmers asking them to report at once if pathological symptoms develop in locusts in their vicinity. If diseased locusts can be found 1t is proposed to spread the ailment as rapidly as possible in order to kill them all off.
 Prolific Species.
 When the females are heavy with eggs their flight is sluggish, and birds and other insects feed upon them But if the females escape their enemies they alight on the ground and deposit eggs in thick and numerous clusters and as many as a billion young may hatch from a single acre of ground where locusts have oviposited The progency of a single female is capable within three generations. of devouring rice. bamboo foliage. whatever comes in their path. The hoppers eat Voraclously over a period of f1fty-four days, when they develop wings and take HIght' sometimes migrating Twenty-Five miles in a single day. Their flight $s largely controlled by the prevailing winds; they do not make headWay against wind, and crops adjacent to their breeding places, in the pampas al the edge of forests may escape them on this account alto gether, while others fifty miles away will be destroyed.
 Eat Each Other
 Locusts are cannibaIistic, in which tact 4es the advantage of using arsenic to poison their forage. Those dyins of the poison will be eaten by their companions, and these will die ana be eaten by others. and so on three or four times until the effects of the poison are too attenuated to kill. ~
 Gases are of little avail against locusts. because their breathing organs are more like boiler tubes than ordi- nary lungs. and gases. unless very con- centrated, have no effect upon them. II was proposed to have the cargo of war gases that the Washington con- ference stopped at Honolulu sent on to the Philippines to use against the locusts until experiments at the Bu- reau or Science convinced the authori- ties that practical use of the gases in this work was not possible All hope centres in natural Annar,,ioS