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two other small rooms and a large kitchen. The rent asked was £150 a year on a five years' agreement. Despite the trouble and cost of moving, it appeared to Mr. Neave and myself that it would be distinctly advantageous to take these premises, especially as an offer of £150 that we had made for the Elvaston Place rooms had been definitely refused. Dr. Harmer, as Chairman of the Finance Sub- Committee, was asked to inspect both premises, and approved of the suggested change.
The new agreement was therefore signed, after having been passed by the Legal Adviser to the Colonial Office, and we took possession on Michaelmas Day, the removal having been very satisfactorily carried out for us by the Office of
Works.
The move has proved a decided success, for not only is the accommodation for our staff and library more satisfactory, but we have also three additional rooms for future expansion, and these should be sufficient for our requirements for another five years or more. Moreover, we have effected a saving in the house- keeping arrangements, so that the increased expenditure will amount only to about £20 a year.
The cost of removal, including alterations in electric light fittings, additional linoleum, blinds, etc., will be approximately £40.
Glossina Investigations.-Shortly after our last meeting Mr. H. R. Wallis, Chief Secretary to the Uganda Government, arrived in England, and on the 16th June Mr. Read invited him, Mr. W. F. Fiske, and myself to meet him at the Colonial Office to discuss the possibility of carrying out an experiment in repopu- lating a small portion of the prohibited area on the shore of Lake Victoria. Mr. Fiske explained in detail his proposal for throwing open a part of the Buddu shore, the natives being allowed to resume their fishing rights only on the condi- tion that effective clearing should be carried out in selected spots, so as to eradicate the breeding grounds of G. palpalis. Mr. Wallis agreed with Mr. Fiske that the risk of the natives contracting sleeping sickness as a result of such an experiment was small, but he was rather doubtful whether the inducement to do the clearing work would prove sufficient, in view of the increased European demand for labour. Further, he stated that in any case sufficient labour for effective clearing would not be obtainable during the continuance of the East African campaign, since the great majority of able-bodied men in Uganda were now being employed in carrying food to the Belgian contingent. Apart from this, both he and Mr. Fiske were of the opinion that it would be most inadvisable to attempt the experiment unless an administrative officer could be appointed for the purpose of controlling the work done, and, further, a patrol steamer to prevent native canoes from visiting the islands would be essential. Mr. Wallis estimated that an effective patrol would cost about £3,000 a year, and, as the Government could certainly not afford such an expenditure for some years to come, it was decided that any experiment of this kind must be postponed for the present. Mr. Fiske left for the United States in July and expected to return about the end of October to hand in his full report, but no news has been received from him recently.
Subsequently Dr. Bagshawe kindly sounded the Rockefeller International Health Board to ascertain whether they would be likely to interest themselves in the matter, but Dr. Wickliffe Rose replied that the Board already had its hands full and would be unable to undertake any new line of investigation just at present. In the last letter received from Dr. Lamborn he stated that he had been instructed to proceed by boat to a port on the southern coast of German East Africa to make a Glossina survey along certain lines of communication. He states that his opportunities for doing any really useful tsetse work have been very limited, and he appears to think that in his present occupation the greater part of his time has been wasted.
Dr. J. J. Simpson will be returning to England from the Gold Coast towards the end of the year, when he will give a report on the work that he has been doing in the Northern Territories.
"Review of Applied Entomology."-A statement of the cost of printing and distributing Volume III. (1915) of this journal will be found in Appendix I. The bill for printing is a good deal heavier than usual, as the volume is much the largest that we have produced, the two series containing 1,000 pages of abstracts, and this has naturally increased the cost of postages, which form much the biggest The rise in the cost of paper was small item in the charges for distribution.
during 1915, and for the last six months we did not receive the customary five per cent. discount on the printing bill. But since the 1st April, 1916, the price of
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paper has risen very considerably, having increased from 158. 1d. to 248. 2d. a ream, a rise of sixty-three per cent. It is fortunate, therefore, that there appears to have been a falling off in the output of entomological literature this year, and the current volume is likely to be only two-thirds the size of that for 1915. This should make the outlay on paper about the same, while the printing would be one-third less. The number of subscribers has slightly diminished, one hundred and sixty-seven volumes of A and B having been sold and twenty-four volumes of the B series only, as compared with one hundred and seventy-seven and fourteen respectively in the preceding year.
It may be remembered that we had some difficulty with Messrs. Dulau & Company with regard to the storage of the surplus copies of our Review, and the authorities of the British Museum kindly placed at our disposal for this purpose a certain area in one of the basement corridors of the Natural History Museum. At a cost of about £15 we had a set of solid wooden bins erected as a first instal- ment. These are now full, but instead of adding to them it has seemed wiser to utilize the space we have in the kitchen of the Queen's Gate office. This room has a sound cement floor, as well as a good supply of suitable shelving, and we can easily find accommodation there for our surplus stock for some years to come. Probably the chief defect in our Review is the fact that it does not in any way reveal the large amount of economic work that is being done in Japan. Mr. Shiraki, the Government Entomologist in Formosa, has recently assured me that the practical study of agricultural pests is being prosecuted in Japan probably with greater thoroughness than in most other countries in the world, and that the literature on the subject is steadily growing. Our previous efforts to obtain abstracts of this literature have met with no success, but we have now enlisted the sympathies of Professor Miyake, of Tokyo. who writes excellent English, and it is to be hoped that before long we may be able to make good this deficiency.
Bulletin of Entomological Research."-In Appendix II. will be found an account of the expenditure in connexion with Volume VI. Although this volume is the largest that we have yet published, the cost of production is actually some- what below the average. This is principally due to the fact that we have had no expensive maps to reproduce, and, moreover, the numerous blocks (forty-eight) used to illustrate Professor Nuttall's valuable paper on the ticks of the Belgian Congo were kindly lent to us by the author. We are also indebted to the following authors for supplying the drawings to illustrate their respective papers :-Messrs. F. W. Edwards, G. E. Green, A. T. Stanton, F. V. Theobald, and C. B. Williams, The fact that the deficit is somewhat larger than for any previous volume is thus due solely to the fall in the sales. As compared with the last normal year (1913) the subscriptions are twenty-two per cent. Tower, while the sales of separate parts have diminished to less than one-third. Fortunately the price of rag-papers has not risen nearly so much as that of the cheaper qualities, the rise in the contract for the current year being from 22s. 14d. to 278. a ream, an increase of twenty-two per cent.
Collections of Insects. During the last six months ninety-two collections of insects were received from thirty-eight different correspondents, distributed thus: Europe, three; Asia; seven; Africa, nineteen; Tropical America, eight; and Australia, one. These consignments contained some twenty-two thousand insects, of which over thirteen thousand were blood-suckers.
So far as we are aware only a single incoming package, a parcel from Fiji, has been lost, while not one of the many parcels sent out by us appears to have gone astray.
A satisfactory feature of the collections is the increasing number of the minute beneficial parasites of the family Chalcididae that are coming in now as a result of Mr. Waterston's published work. The more important collections upon which he is working at present are: (1) a number of species sent in by Mr. C. B. Williams in connexion with his search for an effective parasite of the Trinidad froghopper of sugar-cane; (2) a valuable set of parasites of scale-insects bred by Mr. W. H. Patterson, Government Entomologist in the Gold Coast; judging by the percentage of parasitism some of these species might profitably be introduced into other countries; and (3) a large collection of parasites of some of the more important pests of Indian forest trees, forwarded by the Forest Zoologist, Dehra Dun.
Mr. Waterston was also given permission to prepare for the authorities of the British Museum a popular account concerning fleas as carriers of disease, which has been published as one of the series of economic pamphlets issued by the Museum.