Mr. Fletcher. 
Mr. Shroff. 
Mr. Fletcher. 
Mr. Ghosh. 
Mr Fletcher. 
Mr. Jhaveri 
84. PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING 
Acherontia styx {“ South Indian Insects,” p. 402, tab. 24] is a minor 
pest of Sesamum throughout India and Burma. We have it recorded 
on this crop from Gujarat, Poona, Nagpur, and Pusa and in Burma I 
found it at Minbu. 
In Burma it has occurred on Sesamum at Tatkon also. 
The larvee are large and may usually be hand-picked when they are 
sufficiently plentiful to require control. . 
Pericallia ricini (“ South Indian Insects,” pp. 370-371, fig. 232] 
has been noted in Madras on Sesamwm but is not usually a pest of this 
crop. 
Laphygma exigua also occasionally occurs on Sesamum but is not a 
pest so far as we know. 
Antigastra catalaunalis [“ South Indian Insects,” p. 441, tab. 37] 
occurs throughout India, Burma and Ceylon as a regular minor and 
occasional major pest of Sesamum, the larva rolling and webbing the leaves 
and boring in the shoots and pods. Beyond the removal of the affected 
parts of the plants, little control is practicable. An Ichneumon-fly, 
Tarytia flavo-orbitalis, Cam. [see Fauna of India, Hymenoptera, Vol. 
IIT, p. 506, fig. 148] has been reared commonly at Pusa as a parasite 
of Antigastra catalaunalis, but this fly appears to be already widely 
distributed in India and Burma, so that it is apparently not a very 
effective check. 
Antigastra catalaunalis is the most harmful of all the pests of tJ in 
Bihar. The caterpillars affect the topshoot and the top leaves, rolling 
them into a sort of a knot and checking the growth of the plants. Some- 
times these caterpillars bore into the green pods and eat the seeds inside. 
When I was in Minbu, in Lower Burma, in 1914 I found a consider- 
able proportion of seed-pods eaten into. I could not find any insect 
actually doing it, but I put rt down at the time to Acherontia which was 
present in some numbers. 
The young capsules of Sesamum are damaged by :— 
Asphondylia sesama. 
Nysius inconspreuus. 
Asphondylia sesami is the species described and figured in “ South 
Indian Insects” [p. 364, figs. 224, 225] as the Gingelly Gall-fly. As 
you will see from the second figure, the growth of the young capsules is 
stunted so that they become wrinkled, withered galls and considerable 
loss of crop may result if the attack is bad. This insect is common all 
over Madras and is sometimes bad on the Farm plots at Coimbatore. 
We have no records of its occurrence outside of Southern India. 
In North Gujarat, this gall-fly occurs at Nadiad in the immature 
pods of ti] and at times does very serious damage. 
