• * * The Times of Tuesday published a fascinating
article by Major Walter Elliot - on the offensive against the noxious insects of the Empire by means of " biological control." One sort of offensive is what Major Elliot calls " chemical warfare," but the other is being organized in the laboratory at Farnham Royal for the breeding of " beneficial parasites." The laboratory owes its existence to a grant from the Empire Marketing Board. The cost of every common article produced in the Empire is increased by the wastage due to insect pests. And the white man has himself unwittingly intensified the pest by destroying the equilibrium which had existed between rival insects as well as between rival weeds. When the " beneficial parasites " have been bred at Farnham Royal they will be let loose on pests to which, of course, they will not be at all beneficial—the codling moth, the earwig, the lucerne flea, the woolly aphis, the blow fly, and the rest. The parasite " Zoo " of the Marketing Board is the first of its kind in the Empire, and a very wise investment it is likely to be.
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