Pests In B.S.I.

Same Remedial Measures

MR. R. A. LEVER, a well-known entomologist of the British Solomon Islands arrived in Sydney recently, after leave in England, and left for Tulagi by the Malaita on January 19.

Mr. Lever’s chief investigations in the two and a half years he already has spent in the Solomons concerned ravages upon coconut palms, thought to have been due to insect pests. But it has now been found that the trouble was caused by insufficient manuring and cultivation, and several companies intend to apply manurial treatment to their estates.

Trouble caused by the horn fly, a cattle pest, introduced into Northern Queensland from New Guinea some ten years ago, and which has now spread to the Solomons, has also attracted Mr. Lever’s at tention. The ravages of this pest are responsible for serious loss of condition among cattle in the Solomons. One hundred fertilised females of a parasitic wasp were liberated recently by Mr. Lever to prey upon the fly, and he proposes later to liberate supplies of the hybrid wasp— a cross between an Australian and an East Indian wasp—recently evolved by Dr Tillyard in Canberra, numbers of which have been already released in Queensland.