Mr. Kunhi 
Kannan. 
Mr. Fletcher. 
Mr. Kunhi 
Kannan. 
Mr. Fletcher. 
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32 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING 
Have you tried the effect of any deterrents to prevent ege-laying ? 
Several deterrents have been tried, but not a single one has heen 
found successful. 
That was my experience in Coorg also. On one estate where Jeye’s. 
Fluid was used, I examined some bushes about a week after it had been 
applied and had little difficulty in finding healthy eges under the bark. 
All these deterrent washes only seem effective so long as they retain a 
strong smell over the stems and branches. 
Can you tell us how many eggs are laid by each female beetle ? 
Icannot giveany exact figures for oviposition, but by dissection I 
have found more than one hundred eggs in one beetle. 
Probably about one hundred is the normal number. In one female: 
which I dissected I found 108 eggs, mostly large and well-formed but 
about twenty-five per cent. were still sma!l and undeveloped ; this female, 
however, was caught as an adult and may already have laid some of 
its egos, 
Regarding the eggs, these are of indeterminate shape, long, rounded 
at the ends, white, and soft, and look rather like minute rice-grains. 
They are thrust singly, or in little groups of six or eight, inside cracks 
and under the bark ; they are rarely visible without removing the scales 
of bark and are very rarely laid externally. Eggs laid on 1st November 
1915 hatched out on 12th November, thus taking eleven days ; but 
these egos were kept all the time in the shade, so took perhaps a little 
longer than usual. The young larva bores into the stem either under 
or alongside the place where the egg was laid, or not far off (perhaps 
a quarter-of-an-inch). It bores in rapidly and soon only the tip of 
its tail is visible. It first of all bores a gallery around the stem just 
under the bark and produces a ridge over its gallery which looks just 
as if a wire had been thrust under the bark ; later on the bark usually 
cracks across the top of this ridge and makes it more conspicuous.. 
You will see what I mean in the coloured plate. Then the larva bores 
into the solid wood and seems to burrow about more or less indiseri- 
minately. Mr. Kunhi Kannan has just told us that the life-cycle lasts 
for a whole year, but as regards that I can only say that, so far as my 
experience goes, one seems to get two emergences of beetles, one in April- 
May and the other in November, the latter being far more numerous. 
Whether some descendants of the normal November brood emerge six. 
months late, in April-May, after having taken 18 months to complete 
their hfehistory, or whether there is a definite emergence in April-May 
descended from parents which emerged the previous year in April-May 
or even whether there are two broods in the year, seems to me at present. 
