OR COCCUS, OF THE COFFEE-PLANT. 3 
the whole of them. One of them, called Diabetmia, was suffering 
from another evil—the rat, and it was painful to witness the ravages 
these animals were committing. A large patch of coffee-bushes, 
stretching along a flat at the bottom of a bare rocky hill, had 
so many of the branches cut off and lying on the ground, that 
it seemed as if some one had gone through pruning them with a 
knife ; and many of the branches thus lopped were fine healthy shoots, 
covered with fruit. In the adjoining woods I found the Niloo—an 
` Acanthaceous shrub, on the pith of the young skoots of which the rats 
are said to feed—to be all dead; the same was the case last year 
at Rambodde, where the rats were committing similar ravages. As 
the Niloo is a plant that forms a great proportion of the underwood 
of our mountain-forests, and flowers only once in every five or six 
years, and then dies down, the rat will most probably be a regular 
: periodical enemy to coffee-plantations, at least to those bordering on 
forests. 
The first estate visited in Dolisbagie was Pen-y-lan. There the 
nuisance did not commence till about the setting in of the monsoon, 
in the early part of 1846. Tt first appeared on the top of a ridge exposed 
to the wind, and on the opposite side of the estate to that on which 
the Muruta estates are situated, the distance between them being 
about six miles. Here the extension of the evil was so rapid, and so 
virulent in its nature, that in the first year of its having been noticed, 
1846, it was estimated that a fourth of the whole crop was lost, 
After the rains of 1847 it began to disappear, some trees becoming 
perfectly free; but in low sheltered situations it still continued nearly 
as bad as ever. The trees suffered so much from the previous year’s = 
attack, that scarcely any crop was obtained: thus, from one patch,  — 
consisting of about seven acres, only 100 bushels of green Coffee were — 
picked. A tolerably fair crop was promised at the beginning of the - 
present season, but at the period of my visit the Scale had become nearly 
as prevalent as ever, and will no doubt R a large portion of Pi ^ 
before it has time to ripen. 
Barnagalla and Raxana, two other estates that were passed through 
in this district, were both found to be suffering to a considerable 
extent. ga 
In the Ambegamoa district, the first estate visited was W v 
Talawa. From the o rane I could get no infg Es a 
