inCK GEASSHOPPER. 



119 



small brown object like a flax seed. No specimens have yet been 

 reared in India under observation and the details of the life history are 

 not known. 



The insect has been found or reported from a few scattered local- 

 ities in the plains of India and is probably far more widely spread, gen- 

 erally escaping- notice. It is attacked by a hymenopterous parasite. 



Rice is not the only food-plant sama being an alternative one. 



No general methods of treatment are available against such a pest; 

 and preventive measures based upon local conditions can alone be 

 effective. Some good would be done if all affected plants were destroyed, 

 but no remedial measures can cheek such an insect. It will be necessary 

 to devise measures based on supplying the insect with a trap food-plant, 

 such as sowing an early trap crop or destroying it in 'a particular plant or 

 crop at one special period of the year. It may be possible to find 

 immune varieties of rice, or to make such changes in the agricultural 

 practice of affected districts as will baffle the pest, as, for instance, sowing 

 earlier or later. It is not likely that any good will be done without care- 

 ful study and some experiment, and what is found usefid in one locality 

 will not be likely to suit another. 



Wood-Mason has recorded an insect ^ allied to the Hessian Fly 

 which attacks rice in a somewhat similar manner. This is a distinct 

 pest, of which practically nothing is yet known. Either insect is likely 

 to be found in rice. 



The Rice Grasshopper.^ 



Among the most familiar rice pests is a large grasshopper, green ol* 

 dry grass colour, which lives in the rice-fields, becoming mature about 



Fig. 135. 

 The nice Grasshopper. Aornial form. 



' Cecidomyia oryzee. W. M. (Cecidomyiidac.) 

 2 47. Sieroglyplms furcifer . Serv. (Acridiidaj.) 



