Discussion on alternative hypotheses

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Abstract
B. Adefris Without siding with either of the hypotheses, I want to cite an example of our experience of a very serious Desert Locust upsurge in 1967-8 in eastern Africa. We thought that this began somewhere on the Egyptian border in May 1967 (Rainey & Betts, this symposium, figures 1 and 2, appendix, C19), the next generation came and bred in the Sudan, and the next generation kept on coming south, into the province of Eritrea (Hemming et al ., this symposium, figure 3). During 1967 and 1968 we were invaded by locusts on such a scale that we thought that not only our organization, but even all the organizations together, could never have dealt with them. Our problem was to try and control those locusts, wherever they were; and how much that cost didn’t matter. In fact, we were able to spray some 700 0001 of chemical in a matter of one year. In Eritrea we were able for the first time to control the locusts in the highlands, spraying them as they climbed the escarpment in the Asmara area for example; they stopped longer in the highlands because it was colder there. Thereafter we have sprayed again, at rates of 60 to 70 thousand litres per year between 1971 and 1973 for example, to try and keep the locusts down at their lowest level.

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