- 60 -the lands that are irrigated by them. It is hoped that this method will prevent the scattering of lands with excessive water, which the farmer tends to do for fear of what he endured in the past from drought in the summer season. And then the excessive moisture from the soil is harmful to cotton, just as excessive drought is. Experiments continued to understand the effect of water on the soil in terms of scarcity and abundance, but the results were not the same in all places, and perhaps the reason is the flood.

The abundance of the cotton worm, as in 1912, was also present with the same methods, and it succeeded as it succeeded in the previous year, as did the hostile measures I mentioned in my previous report. The most significant thing that drew attention to the worm pest was the internal disease that was indicated in 1913, so the emergence of cotton bolls was greatly reduced compared to the previous year, and the worms measured were weak. When it reached its peak, the government officials did not cause it to happen, nor did their respect diminish. When a large amount of the worm appeared in the bersim in 1912, a new law was issued authorizing the Department of Agriculture to prevent the irrigation of bersim after a specific date, and this date was set in 1913 as the thirty-first day of May in the rice-growing areas in the northern part of the Lower Egypt, and the tenth day of May in all other areas in Lower Egypt. If anyone irrigated his bersim after the specified date, he would be punished. The bersim was monitored, and if a large amount of the worm appeared in it, which was feared, it was immediately destroyed, and the worms in it were eliminated. The farmers clearly understood this, almost on their own, without the government officials intervening. It is said that the farmers themselves admitted the benefit of this law. Therefore, the 1913 season did not suffer significant damage from the cotton worm. The appearance of the cotton worm in Lower Egypt was announced on May 13, and the bolls government officials began to combat it, and the number of pests that appeared in it gradually increased. The emergence of the worm gradually increased, and it lasted until the end of June and the beginning of July, then the damage was severe and the strike completely disappeared at the end of August. And the cotton planted was 486,600 feddans, and the worm appeared in 486,600 feddans of them. The number of feddans where it appeared was 980,300, and the number of control measures, multiplied by the previous report, was 7,791,800, of which 43,444 were carried out by the farmers themselves in almost all places, except in the Beheira Governorate where the infestation was severe. And 2,900 individuals were punished for not reporting the appearance of the worm in their lands. And 681 of the village elders and sheikhs were punished for their negligence, compared to 2,350 and 2,864 in 1912. I indicated in the introduction to this report that the pink bollworm has increased to an alarming extent.