PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING ey 
by common-sense, combined perhaps with a little prescience. By pre- 
science I mean this—that in some cases we know of insects which are 
capable of becoming, or which we consider likely to become, pests 
although they may never yet have been noted to do damage in India, 
and we shall err on the safe side by including them, for the present at 
any rate, in our Pest List. I will give you two examples of what I mean. 
In writing my book on South Indian Insects in 1913 I included the small 
Jassid bug, Nephotettiw bipunctatus, as a paddy pest, although it had 
never actually been observed up to that time to do damage to paddy, 
because, as I said, it “ sometimes appears in such enormous numbers 
that it may be assumed to be at least a minor pest.”’ This statement 
proved rather prophetic as within two years this insect appeared as 
a serious pest of paddy in the Central Provinces. 
The second example is Prays citri, to whose occurrence in India I 
called attention, in the Bulletin of Short Notes issued last year, as soon 
as it had been found to occur in Southern India, in North Coorg. Within 
the last week I have received from Mr. Meyrick a list of identifications 
of specimens sent to him and I find amongst them a specimen of Prays 
citri taken here at Pusa last March. It is probable that this species 
is widely distributed and common and that it does damage to Citrus 
flowers in orange-growing districts and therefore I consider it as an 
example of an insect which should be placed on our List of Pests even 
though we do not yet actually know that it does damage in India. It 
is a potential pest and requires surveillance as such. 
At our last Meeting we went over the Crop-pests in Systematic order 
and considered eachinsect separately. For this Meeting I have prepared 
a list of crops, with the pests of each, and I propose that we consider 
these, crop by crop. I will first read over our list and give you such 
information as we have on each subject and then you can add any in- 
formation that you can. 
But, before we start with the lists of crops and pests, I will ask if 
any of you have any particular subjects to bring before this Meeting. 
[Lo this question there was no reply.| 
Then we will proceed with the business before the Meeting. It 
would really be better to take these lists of crops in regular order, 
starting with paddy as the most important crop in India, and following 
on with other cereals, sugarcane and so on. But, as we have the 
benefit to-day of the presence amongst us, besides Mr. Andrews, of 
Mr. Anstead and Dr. Coleman, and as they are interested largely in. 
Hill Crops and also wish to attend some of the Mycological Meetings on 
other days of this week, I propose to start to-day with the Hill crops, 
and we will first of all consider the insect pests of tea. 
D 
