6 PESTS OF COFFEE 



instances where the species concerned, having in their new 

 environment none of the checks which hindered their 

 multipUcation in their old homes, rapidly grew into 

 formidable pests. In the case of the last-mentioned 

 species, the fluted scale, when its chief natural enemy 

 was introduced into the new country, the pest was rapidly 

 brought under control. In Ceylon itself. Green regards 

 as presumably imported species, most of the more trouble- 

 some scale insects. Of ten species given by him, four 

 were known in Europe, four in America and two in 

 Australia before they were recorded from Ceylon. 



Although the suddenness of appearance of green 

 bug and its rapid spread over the island is in favour of 

 the view that the insect has been introduced, the causes 

 of the sudden multiplication of insects into pests are so 

 varied and many of them so obscure that a previous 

 record elsewhere or the fact of sudden appearance is not 

 of itself sufficient for establishing a theory of im- 

 portation. 



The Pest in South India. 



The appearance of this pest in South India was not 

 long delayed after its appearance in Ceylon. In the first 

 volume of the Indian Museum Notes^ (1889-91), there is 

 an article which refers to the bug as having " of late 

 years done serious injury to coffee cultivation in Southern 

 India and Ceylon." From the same article it appears that 

 as early as July 1888, experiments towards the control 

 of the pest had already been tried on the Nilgiris. In the 

 Shevaroys the pest first appeared in 1903.^ 



The Pest in Mysore. 



The first intimation received by this Department of 

 the outbreak of green bug in the coffee districts of 

 Mysore was in March 1913, when specimens of the scale 

 were sent in for identification from an estate near Sakles- 

 pur (Hassan District). These were determined as C. 

 viridis. Specimens forwarded shortly afterwards from 

 another estate were also found to belong to the same 

 species. In May 1913, half a dozen estates were known 



* Indian Museum Notes, Vol. I p. 49, 1889-91. 



' Vide Fletcher, Planters' Chronicle, Vol. VIII, 1913, p. 446. 



