i IF] ERA. 447 



ophleps scahtris. l < Iriginal.) 



Distribution. -Throughoul the Plains oi Southern India. 

 Lifehistory. — The pale-yellowish eggs are laid in a mass which 

 may contain upwards of 2.000 eggs and which is placed between 

 two leaflets of Agathi which have folded together for the night; 

 the egg-mass is cemented together and to the leaves by a sticky 

 secretion which rapidly hardens. The young caterpillars hatch 

 out, usually in the morning, after about six days and lower them- 

 selves by slender silken threads by which they swing freely in the 

 air and are dispersed by the wind on to neighbouring plants, which 

 they attack at the growing-point, tunnelling down into the main 

 where the rest of their larval lite is passed. The newly hatched 



-pillar is about ti mm. long, with a black head and greyish 

 body studded with pinkish warts. Tin- full-grown caterpillar 

 is ab,,ut 60—75 mm - long, slender, with slight transverse humps 

 on the back of the body-segments, in colour opaque white, 

 the head and the large prothoracic plate red-brown. The cater- 

 pillar bo- n, its tunnel being filled 

 with frass which is occasionally ejected through holes bitten in the 

 side-walls ol the stem. On attaining full growth, the caterpillar 

 bites an exit hole almost through the outer portion of the stem and, 



1 spinning some silken partitions across its gallery, transforms 

 into an elongate blunt red-brown pupa provided with bands of 

 hooked spines almost encircling the segments. The total life-cycle 

 Egg six days, larva 50 80 days, pupa 14 (5 d; 



Foodplants. — Agathi (Sesbania grandiflora), chithagathi fS. 

 1 (aincha fS. aculeata). 



Status. A serious pest of agathi; an especially bad p 

 young plants. 



Control. (1 ) In the 1 ithi plants 



height, the larval burrow may be slit up and tin' caterpillar killed. 



(2) Syringing .1 mixture oi chloroform 2 ; sote 1 part, 



into the larval burrow, which is marked by the mass of extruded 

 excrement. 



