OR COCCUS, OF THE COFFEE-PLANT. 357 
that a number of their berries fall off before coming to maturity. The 
general health of the tree now also begins to fail and it acquires a 
blighted appearance; a slight loss of crop is sustained, but not to any 
extent. 
The third season exhibits a still greater deterioration. The whole 
plant has then assumed a deep black colour, as if soot had been 
thrown over it in great quantities. This colour is caused by the 
growth of a black parasitic fungus on the young shoots and the 
upper surfaces of the leaves, where it forms a thin fibrous coating, 
not unlike a piece of velvet or felt. When this substance is ex- 
amined with a powerful microscope, it is seen to consist of a dense 
interlaced mesh of fibres, each made up of a single series of minute 
oblong vesicles applied end to end. This fungus, I find, belongs 
to the genus Antennaria, and believe it to be an undescribed species. 
It never makes its appearance on the tree till after the Coccus, or 
* bug," has been a long time on it, and is, no doubt, produced by 
the unhealthy state to which the plant has been reduced, owing to 
the vitiation of its juices by the insect: as certainly as the “scale” 
never appears on the upper surface of the leaf, so surely does the An- 
tennaria never appear on the under one. 
At this period the young shoots have an exceedingly disgusting 
look, from the dense mass of yellowish pustular-like scales that are 
forming on them. The leaves, in consequence of the abstraction of 
their juices, alike by the animal and the vegetable parasite, become 
shrivelled and evidently diminished in size; and the trees, which in 
their healthy state appeared to cover the ground, now seem to stand 
out singly. On the best trees so infected, about two-thirds of the 
crop is lost, and on many scarcely a berry is to be seen. 
On trees thus diseased, immense numbers of a small black species of 
ant are found crowding those portions of the plant on which the young 
scales are most abundant. By the managers of some estates it was’ 
suggested.to me that there might be some connection between the two 
animals; but there is nothing further in it than the fact that the ants 
puncture the scales for the sake of the fluid matter within them, and 
in this way they no doubt prevent numbers from coming to perfection. 
Besides the scale, there is another species of Coccus sometimes 
found on Coffee-trees, but never to the same degree. The female 
of this kind never changes into a scale, but wraps herself up ina — — 
white cottony matter after impregnation, and there producing her eggs, — — 
