426 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST, [December i, 1884. 



serious damage here only to cacao, but it is undoubtedly 

 present on tea. As already intimated, Mr. A. M. 

 Ferguson, junior, of Abhots'ord, has, for more than 

 a year back, noticed, on small portions of Hush, marks 

 so exactly resembling those figured in the Tea 

 Gyclop'Mia as the work of Helopettis, that he strongly 

 suspected the presence of the tea bug But so limited 

 was the damage done, that recently he could respond 

 to Dr. Trimea's request for specimens with only a 

 few leaves. When we visited >bbotsford last week. 

 however, thorough search was instituted, and several 

 immature insects were captured on trees where their 

 work was apparent in spotted and shrivelled flush. 

 The careful examination of one of these poochies under 

 the microscope, with the coloured drawing of the 

 creature in the TeaCydopmdia present for comparison, left 

 no possible doubt on the minds of the three persons 

 who took part in the examination. Our readers 

 may well believe that it was not with feelings 

 of pleasure we recognized and announced the 

 fact of the presence of Belopellis to however 

 small an extent. Hut it can do no good to con- 

 ceal the truth. We only hope that tiie wonderful 

 charge made against us of introducing gum-disease 

 in ISS'2, because we were the first to describe it, may 

 not now be repeated in the case of the tea bug. 

 If HelopeMs exists on Abbotsford, we may take 

 it for granted that it exists and will soon be 

 identified on other tea plantations in Ceylon. The 

 secretive habits of the insect no doubt account 

 for the late Dr. Thwaites never having observed it. 

 The same eminent naturalist never noticed the deadly 

 coffee fungus until in 1 869 it appeared on the estates. 

 We cannot doubt that both fungus and bug 

 are indigenous, latent until forced into action anduotice 

 by (to them) favourable circumstances. We consider it 

 nothing less than providential, that, simultaneously with 

 the appearance of the deadly sucking bug on our tea, has 

 appeared Mr. Wood-Mason's book revealing the secret 

 of the deposition of eggs in succulent shoots. Surely 

 this will enable planters by the readiest method, if 

 not to extirpate, yet to reduce loa minimum the num- 

 bers of these insect pests on their estates. By tins 

 time, we suppose, specimens have reached Dr. Trimen 

 from Abbotslord of the hog-shaped insects with the 

 long proboscis and the peculiar spike on the back, 

 nnd we cannot doubt his verdict, any more than his 

 agreement with our conviction that Mr. Wood-Mason's 

 discovery of the mode in which the eggs of Helopeltis 

 Antonii are deposited gives the tea planters of Ceylon 

 and their Indian brethren of this generation an enorm- 

 ous advantage, of which they will not be slow to 

 take advantage. Those who gather the insects, mature 

 or immature, may be said to destroy their thousands ; 

 but those who devote to the fire holocausts of the 

 eggs can be truly described as destroying their tens 

 of thousands of the chief enemy of the tea plant. 



THE TEA-MITE AND TEA-BUG OF ASSAM* 



A most valuable addition to the literature bearing on 

 tea and tea cultivation has been made by Mr. Wood-Mason 

 in the above work. Of the numerous insects that prey 

 upon the tea plant, there are but two which are known to 

 do such injury as materially to diminish the profits of own- 

 ers of tea estates, and it is to a description of these two 

 pests that the book is devoted Of the Tea-raite Mr. Wood- 

 Mason says : — 



" The mite lives in societies on the upper surface of the 

 full-grown leaves, beneath an exceedingly delicate web, 

 which it spins for itself as a shelter. This web, ordinarily 

 invisible to the naked eye, is ofteu rendered visible by the 

 deposition upou it of dew in minute globules, which give 



* Report on the Tea-mite and Tea-hug of Assam, by J. 

 Wood-Mason, Esq., Deputy Superintendent, Indian Museum, 

 ( lalcutta (Taylor and Francis, London). 



to the leaves, when bathed in the morning sun, an in- 

 describably splendid appearance of being sprinkled over 

 with minute diamonds. I believe that this web serves 

 chiefly as a protection to the tiny arachnids from dew and 

 light showers, for heavy rain, especially if long-continued, 

 breaks up the sheltering webs, and thus leads to the dis- 

 appearance, if not to the destruction, of the pest." 



A good deal of information is given as to the manner in 

 which the mites lay their eggs, which they usually do in 

 hollows, close to the ribs of the leaves, and also to the 

 process by which the insect arrives at maturity, to the 

 method of generation and to the meaus by which the 

 mite injures the tea-plant, which it does by repeatedly 

 puncturing the leaves and pumping out the liquid con- 

 tents of the epidermis by the aid of the pharyngeal 

 pump with which it, in common with all other arachnids, 

 is furnished. A freshly punctured leaf exhibits a regular 

 and pretty pattern of irregular star shaped patches of light 

 green worked upou a dark ground. In order that the 

 manner in which the punctures are made may he under- 

 stood, the mouth parts of the insect are thus briefly 

 described : — 



" These consist of (I) a conical rostrum or beak, the sides 

 of which are embraced and partly formed by (2) a pair of 

 short, stout and jointed palpi or feelers which end in a pair 

 of pincers, and answer to the great claw-beariug feelers 

 of the scorpion and to the first inaxilke of an insect, and of 

 (3) a pair of jaws or mandibles, which do not enter into 

 the. composition of the beak above, and in front of which 

 they lie, but between which and them, on the contrary 

 there exists a, wide interval. The rostrum is not serrated 

 on the edges so as to resemble that of an ordinary tick, as 

 it is in the European T. telarius, but on each side of the 

 minute slit-like opening which constitutes the mouth, and is 

 placed at its lower extremity, it bears two minute, curved, 

 and probably movable spines. At the ends of the short 

 fixed arms of the pincers of the feelers open the 

 ducts of the glands, which furnish the viscid secre- 

 tion wherewith the animals spin their protective 

 webs. The mandibles or jaws are a pair of long aud 

 oehcate needle-shaped rods, which ordinarily lie retracted 

 out of sight into their sheaths ready to be shot out with 

 lightning rapidly. It is a remarkable fact virat the sheaths, 

 whichappear to be none other than the basal joints of the 

 mandibles, retain their primitive embryonic distinctness 

 throughout life, and do uot coalesce in adult life so as to form 

 a single common sheath, as they are said to do in T. 

 telariiis. It is more probable that leaves are punctured 

 by these mandibular needles, and that the two little mov- 

 able spines placed at the sides of the rostrum serve only 

 to keep the sucker-shaped elevation abound the mouth 

 closely applied to the wounded spots in order that the 

 buccal pump may act as effectually as possible, than that 

 the latter perform the doubie duty of lancets and re- 

 tentive hooks." 



The mite is described as being a very minute insect, 

 the female measuring only about onetwenty-fifth of an inch, 

 the male being about one-sixth smaller. To the naked eye 

 the Tea-mite appears as a dull blood-red speck, but uuder the 

 microscope presents itself as a much brighter and more 

 variously coloured object, A full description of the ap- 

 pearance both of the mite and of the bug is given, and 

 there are several excelleut coloured plates which show the 

 insect very much magnified, as it appears when looked at 

 through the microscope. The tea-mite seems to be un- 

 known to science, and the name proposed for it by Mr. 

 AVood-Mason is Tetranychui hiocul-ttus in allusion to its 

 double (really two pairs of) eyes. Regarding the ravages 

 of the tea-mite the author has, amongst other remarks, the 

 following : — 



" The view entertained by many planters that this pest is 

 carri d to gardens and distributed over them by insect-agency 

 does not receive the least support from my observations. 

 Moreover the analogy of the closely allied European species, 

 T. tetarius,\& wholly opposed to such a notion, which doubt- 

 less owes its origin In the Tea-mite having been mistak- 

 en for some one of the numerous red or reddish-yellow 

 mites belonging to totally different groups, which do 

 commonly occur parasitically on the outside of the bodies 

 of the most divers,- groups of insects — a kind of para- 

 sitism which is of 'uch common occurrence that I have 

 rarely if ever sorted the contents of a bottle containing 



