Mr. Robertson- 
Brown. 
Mr. Ghosh. 
Mr. Fletcher. 
198 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ENTOMOLOGICGAL MEETING 
The sucking insects on wheat include :— 
Nezara viridula. 
Dolycoris indicus. 
Macrosiphum granarium. 
Nezara viridula, Dolycoris indicus and various other polyphagous 
Pentatomid bugs are sometimes found in numbers on wheat, but are 
not known to be pests. 
Macrosiphum granarium—there is some doubt about the correct 
name—is the usual Wheat Aphid which occurs commonly all over India 
and often does damage. In some districts it is a common practice to: 
grow mustard either intersown with wheat or alongside the wheat- 
fields and the mustard plants are usually affected with Aphids which 
attract Coccinellids and other predators; later on, when the Wheat 
Aphid comes along and starts multiplying on the wheat plants, its 
natural enemies are already present in numbers and keep it in check. 
There is also assmall Braconid—which has been identified as A phidius 
avene, but by whom and with what degree of accuracy I cannot say— 
which attacks these Aphids and helps to keep them incheck. Beyond 
the encouragement of natural checks in this way it is not usually possible 
to do much in the way of control on a field-scale in the case of the Wheat 
Aphid. 
The grain is attacked in the field and before storage by Holcomyrmex 
scabriceps, which sometimes is the cause of quite serious losses to the 
cultivator by the quantity of grain which it carries away. So much is 
this the case that in times of scarcity in some districts it 1s the practice 
to dig out these ants’ nests and to utilize the stores of grain. 
At Peshawar Holcomyrmex scabriceps has been noticed to take away’ 
wheat-grains from the field when these have been sown. 
cot rats also are troublesome by carrying away the ee 
casted wheat seed. 
The remedy would seem to lie in treatment of the seeds to make 
them unpalatable. Probably storage with naphthaline would make 
them distasteful to ants. But damage of this sort seems to be unusual. 
Holcomyrmexz is usually a pest of stored grain and may carry oft quite 
large quantities of grain from stores. 
Oats (Avena sativa). 
The pests of oats are very similar to those of wheat, although we 
seem to have very few insects recorded as found on cats. 
On the leaves we find Cirphis unipuncta and Cirphis loreyi in the 
same way as on wheat. Last year when I was at Peshawar in May there 
