116 



PESTS OF RTCE AND WHEAT. 



little scope for the use of smoke. Smoke is advisable as a means of 

 checking the insects when they first come as it drives them out of the 

 field ; it has no further effect, kills nothing and is only a temporary device 

 to frighten away the incoming beetles. No specific remedy can be 

 recommended against this pest ; the life history is so safeguarded that 

 there is no obvious point of attack, and reliance must be placed upon 

 preventive measures based solely on local conditions and aimed at 

 destroying the insect in its breeding grounds, securing an earlier or later 

 growth of rice to circumvent the beetle, or making the conditions 

 unsuitable to the existence of the insect. The only available direct 

 remedy is to destroy the beetles with bags, systematically working 

 through the fields and sweeping them clean ; this must be done promptly 

 as soon as the beetles come, and must be thorough. 



It has been found that certain softer-leaved varieties of rice are more 

 attacked than rough hard-leaved varieties growing side by side, and in 

 these cases the ryot has a remedy to hand. The higher priced soft variety 

 is grown at a risk, when the rough variety might afford an almost certain 

 full yield. 



The Rice Bug.^ 



A slender green insect, found flying in the rice-fields, which sucks 



the sap of the developing ears 

 and causes them to turn white. 

 The insect has an aromatic 

 odour, suggesting geraniums, 

 and may be found in rice-fields 

 when the grain forms. The 

 characteristic symptom of the 

 pest is the whitening ears, a 

 whole field often turning 

 colour in this way. 



The insect is a typical 

 bug, with no metamorphosis. 

 The eggs are laid in the jungle, 

 as also in the rice crop coming 

 into ear. Each egg' is oval, 

 somewhat flattened, nearly 

 black and very seed-like. They 

 are laid separately, in clusters 

 of four to ten, on the leaves. 



Fia. 132. 

 The Rice Stiff. (Maffnijled twice.) 



*103. Leptocorisa varicornis. F, (Coreidje.) 



