Abstract
THE establishment of an advisory entomologist in each of the fourteen provinces of England and Wales as delimited by the Ministry of Agriculture, has provided means for recording the incidence of insect pests that were non-existent at the time the Development Fund Act was passed. Information obtained from such sources, supplemented by that supplied by the Ministry's own officers and other observers, is collated and digested and issued at intervals in the form of reports.1 The method of presentation aims at chronicling the events of the period under review in such a way as to render them comparable with similar events in the past and future. Observations on the prevalence of a number of the more important insect pests have now been recorded since 1917. Many of the species appear to vary considerably in numbers over long or short periods, conditions being favourable in most years to certain pests and inimical to others. The fundamental causes of these fluctuations are, as yet, not understood, but it is almost certain that climatic factors, with rises or falls in the prevalence of parasites and other biological agencies, play an exceedingly important part. The collection of records of insect abundance or scarcity continued over a period of years, and correlated with meteorological data and such biological factors as can be reasonably accurately evaluated, should be productive of significant information relative to such fluctuations.
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References
Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. Miscellaneous Publications No. 62: Insect Pests of Crops, 1925–27. (London: Ministry of Agriculture, 1928.) 2s. net.
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IMMS, A. Insect Pests in England and Wales. Nature 122, 940 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/122940a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/122940a0