Chapter 23 Section 2 Pest Control Research

Since ancient times, the interests of insects have coexisted.Our country is based on agriculture. While utilizing beneficial insects, it has also launched a continuous and tenacious struggle against harmful insects, thus ensuring its own life and production, and at the same time promoting biological science research.Among them, the struggle against locusts is particularly mentioned. As early as in the "Book of Rites, Suburb Special Animals", the "Wax Ci" that wrote the year-end sacrifice (that is, "wax sacrifice") said: "The soil turns into its house! The water returns to its gully! Insects do not grow! Vegetation belongs to its marsh! "This is a way of praying that insects will not harm, reflecting the response of early ancestors to insect pests. "The Book of Songs Datian" said: "Get rid of the worms [te special], and the thieves [mao hair], it will not harm my Tianzhi." "Not only actively eliminate pests, but also use fire to kill insects.According to the statistics of our country's historical records, in the more than 2,000 years from 707 BC to 1911 AD, there were about 538 major locust plagues, which occurred once every three or four years on average, causing great losses to human beings.In the long-term struggle, people have deepened their biological understanding of locusts, found many effective methods to control locusts, and there have been many historical figures who have eliminated pests for the people.

Wang Chong said in "Lunheng Shungu Pian": "The locusts are born, fly or gather, and the land where they gather is dry and dry. The officials led the people to make a ridge, and drove the inside of the ridge to drive the locusts away. Accumulating thousands of dendrobiums, we are attacking locusts..." described in detail the ecological habits and hazards of locusts, and the method of digging ditches to catch locusts through the ages. "Hanshu Pingdi Ji" records the severe drought in the second year of Yuanshi (AD 2), "Send envoys to catch locusts. People catch locusts and officials, and receive money with stones (dou Dou)." It records that the masses were mobilized to offer rewards Earliest example of locust catching.It is recorded that in the seventh year of Xiaowu Taiyuan (382 AD), Qin Fujian sent troops to assist the people in exterminating locusts. "Qi Min Yao Shu" quoted "Shu Sheng Zhi Shu" to store seeds and prevent locusts by drying them in the sun and "taking dried moxa and storing them together".Yao Chong, Prime Minister of the Tang Dynasty, was a major event in the history of locust control. In June of the second year of Zhenguan (AD 628), the locusts in Gyeonggi were so frightened that Tang Taizong ordered him to sin. He foolishly thought that he would swallow a locust by himself. Disasters can be eliminated.In the fourth year of Kaiyuan (716 A.D.), locusts broke out in Shandong. Prime Minister Yao Chongli resisted the interference and insisted on the idea that man can conquer nature.In Bianzhou alone, "140,000 stones of locusts were obtained, and those who did not have Bianqu flow are invincible."This record allows us to understand the severity of the locust plague at that time and the great victory achieved in the fight against locusts.

The Song Dynasty realized that there was an egg-forming stage in the life history of locusts, and began to pay attention to digging eggs to kill locusts, and took the initiative in the struggle.For example, in June of the first year of Jingyou (1034 A.D.), people from various roads in Kaifeng were recruited to dig more than ten thousand stones of locust seeds; in the ninth year of Chunxi (1182 A.D.), laws and regulations on locust removal were promulgated.Regulations: "Officials and private deserted fields where locusts have fallen, order Zuoying to send recruiters to dig up locusts (that is, eggs), but if they can't get them all and cause them to occur in the next year, they will be punished one hundred times." Legal punishment measures are adopted to consolidate The results of locust extermination.Ouyang Xiu, a famous politician and writer, wrote in "Reply to Zhu Cai [shen Shen] Poems on Catching Locusts":

It reflects other situations in the struggle against locusts. my country is also the author of the earliest locust control law in the world - the "Xining Edict" in 1075 AD.The second locust control law is the "Chunxi Edict" in 1182 AD.The earliest locust control manual is the "Law of Catching Locusts" in 1193 AD.In the following dynasties, catching locusts was listed as a national priority.Many works on locust control, such as Xu Guangqi's "Elimination of Locusts" and Gu Yan's "Complete Book of Control of Locusts" have detailed discussions on locust control.In particular, "Elimination of Locusts" has a further understanding of the life history of locusts and the relationship between locust occurrences and the surrounding environment, and thus proposes methods to transform locust occurrence bases and eradicate locusts. "Elimination of Locusts" pointed out that locust eggs in summer are the easiest to hatch, but if the eggs encounter rain within eight days after laying, they will rot.In winter, the eggs will not hatch and must wait until spring.If the overwintering eggs encounter severe cold and spring rain, they will also rot.It can be seen that people at that time had realized the influence of natural conditions such as seasons, rain, and temperature on the occurrence of locusts.Regarding locust occurrence bases, the "Elimination of Locusts" pointed out that: locusts mostly occur in riverbank depressions, especially those dry and stagnant water areas where "暵〔汉〕 overflows impermanently".Therefore, it is emphasized to transform these locust occurrence bases.

China is the first country in the world to adopt biological pest control.Around the time of the Western Jin Dynasty, my country had already invented the biological control technology of using insect natural enemies to control insects.Ji Han's "Southern Vegetables and Trees" records: "The tangerine is a genus of tangerines. It has a sweet and unique taste. Those with yellow and tangerine are called pot tangerines. Jiaozhi people store ants in mat bags, and those who bury them in the market, their The nest is like a thin catkin, the sack is connected with branches and leaves, and the ants are in it, and they nest together to sell. The ants are reddish-yellow, larger than ordinary ants. If there are no such ants in the southern citrus trees, in fact, they are all injured by colonies of beetles, and there will be no one left. That's it." This is the earliest record about using insects to control insects.Similar records can also be found in "Youyang Zazu" by Duan Chengshi in Tang Dynasty.Duan Chengshi said: "There are ants in the South of the Five Ridges, which are larger than the horse ants in the middle of Qin Dynasty. They form nests in sweet trees, and taste sweets on them in real time. The sweet skin is thin and slippery. They often live in nests."

The so-called red-yellow ants here are ants that are larger than ordinary ants, that is, today's yellow ants, also known as mangrove ants and weaver ants, which are produced in the tropics or subtropics (Figure 15).It often builds nests on the nets of citrus trees, and can devour citrus branches and fruit pests.According to literature records, there were ant traffickers who specialized in collecting and selling yellow ants in ancient my country.They "store ants in mat sacs" or use "pig urine foam" or "cloth bags" to store ants and sell them to fruit farmers.It can be said that this method was widely used to control insects in southern my country in ancient times.This is a method of pest control using predatory insects.Later scholars also knew that many other insects had the habit of preying on pests.Lu Dian's "Piya" in the Song Dynasty recorded: "The dragonfly has six legs and four wings, and its wings are as thin as a cicada. It eats mosquitoes and flies during the day." Su Shi mentioned in "Dongpo Zhilin" that a walking insect preys on armyworms. Condition.In the eighth year of Yuanyou (1093 A.D.), Zifang worms (i.e. armyworms) caused more serious damage to crops than locusts. There was a small (insect beetle) [jia fake] insect that broke its waist when it saw Zifang worms, commonly known as Why not.The small (insect beetle) insect here is a kind of walking insect, also known as a carapace.Its adults and larvae are both carnivorous and eat a lot, which is one of the natural control factors of insect pests in nature.In ancient times, predatory bees were also found to be the natural enemies of locusts.

In addition to insects, ancient times also mentioned arthropods, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals and other natural enemies of insects and their utilization.