AGRICULTURAL ENTOMOLOGY. 231 



which have also been under investigation. Even then a good deal 

 more material remained than could be dealt with, so I propose only 

 to touch upon the better known and more important species, and to 

 omit altogether a very considerable number of different kinds of 

 insects which have been sent to the Indian Museum during the past 

 year as injurious to crops, but which, so far as our information at 

 present goes, are of lesser importance. 



The locusts which have over-run nearly the whole of India during 

 i he past two years, and whose life-history has lateby been traced, are 

 perhaps the most prominent of the insects which I have to show to 

 you to-night. But as a diagram is in preparation to explain what has 

 been found out about the locusts, I will to some extent reverse what 

 would otherwise be the natural order of things, and take the other 

 insects first, leaving the locust to .be shown to you at the end if time 

 allows. 



The first slide, then, which I have to show to you to-night is a 

 photograph of the moth Leacania extranea, which I reared from a 

 caterpillar sent by the Collector of Rungpur, where the insect was 

 very destructive to paddy in the early part of the past cold weather ; 

 the Manager of the Wards' Estates, Rungpur, indeed reporting that 

 many of the cultivators had been ruined by it. The caterpillars live 

 in holes in paddy fields where the water has subsided, and sally out 

 at night to cut off the unripe ears of paddy, which they drag to their 

 holes in the ground where they devour them at their leisure. This 

 is all that has yet been actually observed in India about the insect, 

 but comparative examination of it shows that it belongs to that 

 section of the zoological group of Noctues moths, whose caterpillars 

 are known in the United States as cut- worms ; and the habits of such 

 a number of forms belonging to this group have been so closely 

 observed in other parts of the world, and have proved so constant for 

 the different forms, that we can predict with almost absolute certainty 

 that those of the present insect are as follows. The mother moth, 

 after meeting with a mate, lays her eggs on plants, and the young 

 caterpillars, which are born from these eggs descend into the ground, 

 and burrow for themselves holes where they live until they arrive at 

 their full growth. They then molt their skin and become little 

 brown ehrysalids. The chrysalid Kes in the ground until the moth 



