96 



been inaccurate. As Fabricius's work was published in 1793, further evi- 

 dence is thus afforded that the insect is indigenous to the western hemi- 

 sphere. This insect still does similar damage in the vicinity of the 

 original source of our information, as is indicated by two articles by 

 Miss Ormerod in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Lou- 

 don, 1879, xxxTii-xxxvi and xxxvi-xl, aiul by the reports of Mr. Im- 

 Thurm, curator of the British Guiana Museum at Georgetown, pub- 

 lished some time previously, but which we have not seen. 



In an added note to his Gardener's Ghronhie article Westwood states 

 that according to information given him by " an intelligent Jamaica 

 cane-grower " the borer was very destructive in Jamaica some 15 years 

 previously [1S12], but that its ravages had been greatly checked by 

 allowing the refuse to accumulate on the ground and then tiring the 

 whole plantation, the old roots subsequently throwing up more vigorous 

 shoots. 



Mr. H. Ling Eoth has studied what he believes to be the same species 

 in Queensland (Parasites of the Sugar-cane, reprinted from the Sugar 

 Cane, March and April, 1885. London, 1885). And in the same year 

 M. A. Delteil (La Canne a Sucre, Paris, 1885) treats of the Mauritius 

 borer and considers it to have been imported from Java, whereas the 

 1850 commission had considered that it was derived from Ceylon. In 

 1890 Dr. W. Kruger published in the Berichte der Versuchsstation filr 

 Zuckerrohr in West Java, Heft I, Dresden, 1890, an account of the 

 Javan sugar-cane borers, and figures and describes a species determined 

 as Biatrcea striatalis Snell., which almost precisely resembles our species, 

 and which he says occurs not only in Java, but also in Borneo, Sumatra, 

 and Singapore. In this same report another similar borer is described 

 by Snellen as Chilo infuscatellus. 



The West Indian cane borer made its appearance in the sugar-cane 

 plantations of Louisiana at an early date. J. B. Avequin, writing in the 

 Journal de Pharmacie for 1857 (vol. xxxii, pp. 335-337), upon the ene- 

 mies of the sugar-cane in the Antilles and Louisiana, stated that during 

 the two or three preceding years this insect had spread over some of the 

 cane fields of Louisiana, but without having caused up to that time 

 any great damage. He thought that the early frosts towards the end 

 of October or November destroyed great numbers. It appears to have 

 been first noticed in the ])arish of St. John Baptist in the year 1855, 



Since this time the insect must have been constantly i^resent in the 

 Louisiana cane fields, and has probably been reintroduced from time to 

 time with fresh shipments of seed cane from the West Indies. In the 

 fall of 1878 a few specimens were sent to Dr. Riley by a correspondent 

 in Assumption Parish, Louisiana, and in the spring of 1879 Mr. E. A, 

 Schwarz sent in a bit of cane containing larvje from the Bahamas, In 

 tlie spring of 1881, I was sent to Louisiana by Professor Comstock, 

 then entomologist of the Department of Agriculture, to study the sugar- 

 cane beetle {Ligyrus riigiceps), and had the opportunity of studying this 



