ESSAY ON FUEL PLANTATIONS. 95 



in Southern India, one with deep, orange bristles set in 

 parallel rows, and the other of an olive green, thickly covered 

 with spines. The cowhage, or cowitch as it is popularly 

 called, is known in Tamil as Poonay Poodkoo Kodie. If your 

 nursery is situated low down near water, you may be troubled 

 with land crabs. These are very troublesome, clearing a 

 whole bed of every plant in a single night. I have poured 

 a gallon of a mixture of quicklime and urine down their 

 holes every day for a week; but found that it made not the 

 slightest impression on them. The fruit of Emblica Offici- 

 nalis, known as Nellikai in Tamil, is excellent. The round 

 little fruit can be rolled like marbles into the crab holes 

 ten or twenty into a hole. They decay in the water at the 

 bottom of the burrow, and make it foul, and unfit for the 

 crabs, it is even said to kill them ; but I have no proof of 

 this. 



When the young plants in your plantation are a few feet 

 high, the stem is often bored out, by the larva of beetles 

 of various species. The watcher in charge should go round 

 with a bit of soft copper wire 2 feet long and one-tenth 

 of an inch in diameter, and after removing the excrement 

 of the insect which it cunningly felts together with silk, 

 and uses as a screen to hide the entrance to its tunnel, probe 

 the hole with the wire, which from its softness will follow 

 the curve upwards or downwards as the case may be. The 

 point of the wire will generally pass through the insect, if 

 he is at home, and kill him and this can be ascertained by 

 examining the point of the wire when it is extracted, when 

 it will be found to be wet, and covered with portions of the 

 slain insect. 



If, however, in addition to boring the tree, the larva has 

 girdled it as well the best plan is to coppice it below the 

 limit of the tunnel, and cut the top of the severed stool 

 neatly into a cone. The fuel-planter has still a multitude 

 of enemies to deal with, for as the trees grow up, some 

 species are almost entirely destroyed, or, at all events, have 

 their growth greatly retarded by various species of Loran- 



