Abstract
THE need for standardized methods of testing insecticides has become an important factor in insecticidal research, especially where routine examination of new materials is desirable. Chemical assay may provide an index of the potential toxicity of an insecticide, but evidence has been provided recently to show that the influence of toxicant concentration in an insecticide may be completely obscured by variation in the physico-chemical properties of the carrier medium1. The fact that each component of an Insecticide may contribute towards gross toxicity restricts the usefulness of chemical assay as an index of toxicity. Hitherto, attempts which have been made to correlate chemical and biological, tests have been based on the invalid assumption that the main purpose of a carrier medium is to transmit the insecticide to the test insects, after which toxicant concentration is a limiting factor in biological activity. This assumption has provided a general basis for 'standard' methods of insecticidal bio-assay, in which attention has been directed more towards arbitrary elimination of unknown variable factors than towards the fundamental causes of this variation2.
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