PLATES During My Recent Short Tenure Of

AN ENTOMOLOGICAL TOUR IN KURDISTAN BY HUGH SCOTT, M.A., SC.D. (PLATES111, IV, V.) During my recent short tenure of the position of Agricultural Entomologist to the Government of Iraq it fell to my lot to under- take a tour of inspection in the mountainous country of Kurdistan. Official journeys in various parts of Iraq would have recurred not infrequently in the course of my duties, had I continued to hold the post. As things happened, this single tour was an exception- ally intriguing experience to me, and the story of it may be of some general interest, if only to indicate the kind of problems to be grappled with. I have submitted a report on matters of economic importance to the Iraq Department of Agriculture, and my observations on subjects relating to entomology, both ' economic ' and ' uneconomic,' are here narrated in a different form, Kurdistan is a large term, and the regions inhabited by the Kurds embrace parts of Persia and Turkey as well as of Iraq. I saw only a piece, even of that section which lies within the Kingdom of Iraq. My operations were confined to the Liwa (administrative division) of Sulaimania, with its capital, the town of that name, as a base; but they led me to within a mile or two of the Persian frontier, nearly 180 miles N.N.E. of Baghdad as the crow flies, while by the route I followed the distance from Baghdad to my furthest point was more than 300 miles. The whole district is visited by comparatively few Britishers, and probably little or nothing has been written about its entomology in British journals. The tour lasted just over a week, June ~1st-2gth,1928. Could T have carried it through a month earlier, which was impossible, the season would have been more favourable for investigations into the status of certain pests, and Kurdistan would have been a garden of wild flowers. In those torrid regions late summer was in full swing by the end of June. Most wild plants had gone to seed, insects were relatively scarce, and not a butterfly was seen during the whole tour. But much of interest remained on view. A 200-mile rail journey brought me from Baghdad to the ancient city of Kirkuk. It lasted eighteen hours and was hot, the temperature in the compartment reaching 111 deg. F. in the middle hours of the day, despite an electric fan and other cooling appliances. Little but sun-baked, dun-coloured plains met the eye. Large. parts are under cereal cultivation, and towards the 70 [March, end of the journey the last of the newly reaped grain-harvest was seen being carried on donkeys. Though the land appears level there is actually a rise of about a thousand feet or more from Baghdad, since Kirkuk lies at an elevation of 1,100 feet above the sea. SKETCHMAP OF IRAQ, ETC. On June 23rd I travelled a further 74 miles, nearly due East, between Kirkuk and Sulaimania in a hired Ford car, over a route which is being converted from a rough track into a mcfor-road. The driver was an Assyrian Christian, and my laboratory-boy, who accompanied me throughout the tour, belonged to the same ancient nation and Church. On leaving IGrkuk there is a sudden change in the cotntry-side, the traveller finds himself almost immediately among the foothills and, further on, in the region of Chemchemal, two mountain ridges and a broad valley are crossed. There is a total rise of about 1,600 feet from Kirkuk to Sulaimania, which lies at an altitude of approximately 2,700 feet. The hills are grass- covered and for the most part treeless, though the slopes of one defile were dotted with scrubby bushes of evergreen oak. A brief halt mas made in the foothills at a pain: where a few spikes of wild white hollyhock (Althaea) were still in flower, and a Clerid beetle (Trichodes laminatus Chew., var.) was taken from the large globular blue flower-head of a globe-thistle (Echinops). At another stopping-place, higher up and near a stream, the herbage was full of an umbellilerous plant (Eryngium sp., related to the sea- holly) and of spiny, thistle-like Compositae, some with yellow, some with mauve, flowers, while grasshoppers abounded. There was no lack of insectivorous birds. Swallows perched in flocks on the telegraph-wires, swifts circled over the villages and flocks of rose- coloured starlings (Pastor roseus) were seen. The last are of special interest to entomologists, as they feed largely on locusts. The town of Sulaimania is pleasantly situated in a broad, undu- lating valley and is backed by a long range of grassy mountains, the Girjeh Range or Asamir Dagh, rising to over 5,000 feet. Its day temperature in summer is often ten to twenty degrees (Fahren- heit) below that of Baghdad, and the relief felt by one newly arrived from the plains is very great. It is, however, subject to a hot and exhausting north-easterly wind called Rashaba, which blew during part of my stay. At this place one is surrounded by a different style of building, a completely different race and language from those of the Arab-populated plains. The dress and customs of the Kurds are among the most picturesque and interesting that I have ever encountered, but they cannot be enlarged on here. I found shelter in the guest-rooms of the Sarai, a large unfinished new Government building, and was most hospitably entertained at the house of the Administrative Inspector, Captain W. Lyon, O.B.E., and Mrs. Lyon. In the afternoon I was taken to see a beet-crop which was heavily infested with flea-beetles (HALTICISAE),the cause of serious damage to the foliage. Specimens examined by Herr Heiker- tinger prove to belong to three species, Phyllotreta cruciferae Goeze and Chaetocnema tibialis Illiger, both present in great numbers, and a species of Haltica, probably H. tamaricis Schr., which seemed much scarcer. So far it has only been possible to 72 [March, recommend the use of a well-known mechanical contrivance for controlling these pests. Not far away was a field of wheat, left unharvested as worthless owing to the depredations of the Pentatomid (Scutellerine) bug Eurygaster integriceps. This is known as the Sunn pest of cereals, or Ergaija (possibly a corruption of the word Eurygaster) and is one of the worst insect pests in Iraq, Syria and parts of Persia and Russia. It occurs all over Iraq from the Northern and Eastern frontier-hills to the plains as far South as Baghdad. South of that latitude dereals are harvested before the nymphs reach maturity, and the consequent enormous mortality prevents the damage from assuming serious dimensions. North of Bagh- dad the adults appear on the young crops in early spring, apparently by migrating from the hills. They lay eggs in late March and April on the undersides of the leaves of weeds or of the young cereals. The adults at first feed by sucking the main stem and later attack the immature grain. The new-hatched nymphs also feed on the main stem and, as they develop, climb the plants and suck the grain. The attack on the stem produces tillering, and that on the ears renders the grain worthless. A badly infested field may produce no grain at all, or at most only about half the normal amount. By the latter part of May most of the nymphs have become adults. Barley-harvest is then mostly over and wheat- harvest soon follows. What happens to the adults from that time till the next spring is not fully understood. Some, but apparently only a small pro- portion, aestivate in the plaips. I found them near Baghdad early in June under dry clods at the roots of fig trees, or several inches deep in the soil. But specimens reared in captivity evince a marked desire to take flight a few days after becoming adult, others have been seen flying strongly in the open, and the accepted idea is that most of them migrate to the North. In Persia they spend the rest of the summer and the following winter hiding at the roots of scrub on mountain-sides. Near Tehran and other cities there are well-known spots where they congregate in thousands, and are collected and destroyed by forced labour. There is a striking analogy between this congregating habit and that of various COCCINELLIDAEin Europe, which mass together in great numbers in the winter months, sometimes in very exposed situations." * Much of the above information about Eurygasfer i?ztegricepsis taken from two publications of the Department of Agriculture, Iraq : J. F. Webster, ' Sunn Pest on Cereals in Iraq ' (AgrrczrLturn~ Lenfit So. 13, 1926) and R. S. Y. Ramachandra Rao, 'A Preliminary List of Insect Pests of Iraq Melnoir No- 7, pp. 8, g, 1921). As regards the congregating habits in Persia, I had consulted the files of correspondence received by the Department of Agriculture from American Agriculturists em ployed by the Persian Government. At Sulaimania I was much too late to see anything of the pest at work on the wheat. Moreover, its incidence in 1928 as compared with previous sexsons had not been severe. The attacks seem to be worst in particular cycles of seasons, which possibly recur with a rhythmic periodicity. No adults could be found near the unreaped wheat, though we searched under stones and clods, and at the roots of big weeds and maize-plants. The cultivators said all the adults had flown away ' to Iran ' (Persia), but after- wards admitted that they had found some on the mountains near by, even in winter, in pits dug for storing snow through the summer.

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