ICRhll/rURAL ENTOMOLOGY. 233 



Wv have spout so long ovov the paddy cut-worm that I must hurry- 

 over the remainder of the insects belonging to this group, and will 

 only notice that in Oudh last cold weather the young rabi crops, 

 including opium, suffered severely from cut-worms belonging to the 

 species Ochroplmra fiammatra and Agrptis stiff asa, which. I now 

 show to you. The only remedy found effective was irrigation, which, 

 brought the caterpillars to the surface, so that the birds could get at 

 them. In Maisur, also, during the past few months, young coffee has 

 suffered badly from cut-worms, one of which we have reared in the 

 Museum, and found to belong to the cosmopolitan species, Agrotis 

 segetum, which now appears upon the screen. This insect was in such 

 numbers that it destroyed fifteen thousand fine young coffee plants 

 on a single estate, in spite of the fact that the manager put on all the 

 coolies to collect the caterpillars by hand, with the result that consi- 

 derably over a lakh of them were destroyed. 



From the Murshidabatl, Tipperah, and Jalpaiguri districts also 

 come accounts of injury to young rabi crops by cut- worms. The 

 produce indeed of two thousand bigahs of land in Murshidabad is 

 said to have been destroyed by them last cold weather. Enough, 

 however, has already been said to give you some idea of the nature of 

 the pest. 



The next slide which we come to shows a caterpillar of the paddy 

 borer, with a bit of rice straw which has been tunnelled by it. This 

 insect is reported to have done considerable injury during the past 

 two years to paddy in the Thana district of Bombay. It was pre- 

 viously described in a paper by Mr. "Wray as destructive to paddy in 

 Perak. The insect tunnels the rice straws, thereby lowering the 

 vitality of the plant and spoiling the crop. I have not as yet been 

 successful in rearing the moth of this insect in the Museum, but the 

 caterpillar is so closely allied to the rice stalk borer of the United 

 States, that we are quite safe in concluding that the two insects have 

 identical habits. These habits are as follows : The eggs are laid in 

 batches at the base of the leaves, some hundreds of eggs being some- 

 times laid by one female. The caterpillars hatch rapidly, and after 

 feeding for a short time upon the leaves they tunnel into the stalk, 

 the chrysalis being formed either in the leaf sheaths or stalks. 

 Several generations, each of which takes about two months, are gone 



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