222 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
passed through Lake Worth, and at a season (in June) when the crops had 
long been harvested. In the region south of Lake Worth only occasionally 
a few garden vegetables and fruit trees are raised for the own use of the 
settlers, and are always planted in extremely small and isolated patches. 
As everyone knows, this mode of cultivation is the best protection against 
injurious insects, and thus the few cultivated plants in southern Florida 
are, as a rule, remarkably free from injurious insects. 
Most settlers along Biscayne Bay and on the mainland farther south do 
not plant anything save perhaps a few cocoanut or orange trees, but sub- 
sist by manufacturing starch from the roots of Zamia integrifolia. This 
wild-growing plant is therefore of the greatest economic importance for 
southern Florida. The insects infesting this plant are the larvae of Eu- 
mceus atala^ Coccidof the genus Diaspis, and the larva of a large Scarabitid 
beetle, probably Strategus antceus. The first-named species has been the 
subject of a former communication.* It suffices to repeat here that in 
spite of its great abundance it is not injurious to the plant. The Coccid is 
too rare to be taken into consideration here ; but the Scarabseid larva is 
very injurious. It infests the roots, or rather the subterranean stems, of 
the plant and renders them altogether unfit -for use. Fortunately it is tol- 
erably rare. 
In the process of making starch two other insects acquire a certain im- 
portance, viz., the larva of an Eristalis and that of a large species of the 
family Muscida.^ Both larvae live in the greatest abundance in the 
refuse "coontie," the Eristalis larva in the fluid or semi-fluid portions 
thereof and the Muscid larva in the drier portion. The latter larva occa- 
sionally gets into the starch which is laid out for drying, and fouls the 
same, but the Eristalis larva becomes especially a great nuisance by crawl- 
ing into the well if the refuse coontie gets too dry. The construction of a 
well is the essential and most troublesome work in the manufacture of 
starch, since there is no fresh water wherever the coontie plant grows, and 
the well has to be cut through the solid coral rock to a depth of from 15 to 
20 feet. The Eristalis larvae get into the well by the myriad, and unless 
often and carefully cleaned out the well is soon changed into a cesspool 
full of decayed and decaying larvae and the water unfit for use. 
The most important cultivated plant in semi-tropical Florida is the 
Pineapple, which is raised on quite a large scale on the more northern 
and larger Keys. I failed to find any destructive insects thereon ; in fact, 
no insect whatever seems to feed on the leaves or the uninjured fruit. 
But the plant has a great enemy in the rats, and any fruit which has been 
injured by these rodents becomes at once infested by a multitude of insects 
(Nitidulid beetles and various Diptera). Another plant of considerable 
economic importance, at least in the opinion of the settlers, is the Cocoa- 
*Published in Insect Life, v. i, No. 2, 1888, pp. 37-40. 
t Larvae and imagos of both species are now in the collection of the U. 
S. National Museum, but have not yet been determined. 
