2 7O Coffee Planting. 



There is a general impression among the South- 

 ern Indian planters that the advent of the borer 

 was in some way due to effects on the coffee plant 

 of want of rain, and I am firmly of opinion that it 

 can only be kept out of estates in hot, dry situations 

 like the Bamboo districts of the Wynaad, by pro- 

 viding the coffee estates with suitable shade, if 

 indeed irrigation to some extent be not also neces- 

 sary during the long dry season. 



The natives connected the borer visitation with 

 the dying out of the bamboos, which, occurring 

 once in every sixty years, or some such period, 

 took place throughout Coorg and Wynaad in the 

 very year, 1865, in which the borer began to be so 

 well known. It seems highly probable, supposing 

 the borer to have been previously accustomed to 

 find its home and food in the green bamboo stems, 

 that as soon as these withered and died it might 

 have betaken itself to the coffee plant for suste- 

 nance. For further particulars regarding the 

 "borer visitation," the reader cannot do better 

 than refer to Dr. Bidie's Report to the Madras 

 Government (1867), and to the late Col. C. P. 

 Taylor's " Campaign against the White Borer " 

 (Madras). 



It may here be added that tne ravages of the 

 borer were most felt, on weedy, neglected plantations; 

 so that it is fair to infer that much, in the way of 



