December, '13] WOLCOTT: WEST INDIAN AND DEMERARAN NOTES 451 



(2) The serious injury by the giant moth borer, which is being 

 controlled and is much less abundant than formerly, and 



(3) The comparative insignificance of the injury by the other 

 minor cane pests, Metamasius, termites and the mealy bug, which 

 despite its intrinsic importance, seems almost negligible by comparison 

 with the injury by Diatroea. 



In Trinidad, the situation in regard to the insect pests of cane is 

 unique. The most injurious pest is not Diatrcea, as it is in practically 

 all other sugar producing countries of the West Indies, but a froghopper. 

 Insignificant as is the injury produced by froghoppers elsewhere, in 

 Trinidad the froghopper has achieved as much notoriety as a pest 

 of cane as has the boll weevil in the United States. The sugar cane 

 froghopper of Trinidad, Tomaspis varia Fabr., is a small bug, that 

 passes its immature stages as a nymph underground feeding on the 

 roots of cane, grass and weeds. The adult is one quarter to one 

 half inch long, with blue-black wings banded with yellow, folded 

 over its back. It sucks juice from the leaves and stalk of cane, but 

 produces no serious injury. The eggs are laid in the trash and some- 

 times in the ground, from Avhich the newdy-hatched larvae have no 

 difficulty in reaching the roots of the cane. Despite the insignificant 

 size of the nymphs, the enormous numbers in which they appear on 

 the roots of the cane, especially if they chance to be abundant during 

 a dry spell when the cane is young, either kills the cane outright, 

 or so stunts the growth, that the crop is worthless and in many cases 

 the field is abandoned. 



It is not at all surprising that Tomaspis should be a pest on cane 

 in Trinidad when one considers the agricultural field practices most 

 common there. What an unprejudiced observer first notices is the 

 great abundance of weeds in the fields of cane. Grass and weeds 

 are alternate host plants, if they are not the original hosts of Tomaspis, 

 and as they are allowed to grow almost unchecked in the cane fields, 

 it is not surprising that the froghoppers have also attacked the cane. 

 Another most noticeable feature of Trinidad agriculture is the large 

 number of aljandoned fields, wdiere a few stools of cane still remain, 

 but are mostly grown up to grass and weeds. The roads and "traces" 

 through the cane estates and the land along the railroads are overgrown 

 with weeds. The whole environment is ideal and could not be better 

 for the propagation of large numbers of froghoppers and other pests 

 of cane. When the managers of the estates come to realize the impor- 

 tance of cleaning up the grass and weeds in the cane fields and of 

 planting some other crop in the abandoned fields, there will be a 

 most noticeable reduction in the injury to cane by insects, and more 

 particularly in the injury caused by the froghopper. Because of the 



