THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY 191 



be, the visitor seldom cares to prolong his stay where a 

 thousand voices are in full chatter and stone hammers are 

 incessantly beating, on wooden tables, leaves of the plant in 

 readiness for the lissom fingers of the girls who roll them up 

 into cheroot form. These women of weeds earn good 

 wages — from eight to ten dollars a month — which amply 

 suffices to get them all the comforts they need and leave a 

 fair margin for dress, of which they are as proud, if not as 

 prodigal, as the gayest of their European sisters. A novel use 

 for cigars was found in the Philippines some years ago. Copper 

 money being very scarce, quite inadequate to the daily re- 

 quirements, cigars were passed from one person to another 

 in lieu of coin, to the small satisfaction of the one in whose 

 hands they had from friction become unsaleable. 



It is noteworthy that even tobacco-leaves, the avowed 

 destroyers of insect life, should themselves be the prey of 

 some form of the ubiquitous microbe. Besides the mite 

 just mentioned that speckles the outer leaf of old cigars, a 

 more ravenous one has been discovered working its will on 

 Indian cigar-leaf. In a recent issue of Indian Museum 

 N'otes, Mr. Cote gives an interesting account of the works 

 and ways of an insect that drills tiny round holes in tobacco- 

 leaves, so small indeed that they had escaped observation 

 until the havoc wrought awakened alarm. The pest tunnels 

 its way through the leaf, irrespective of strength or flavour, 

 even the Trichinopoli is not beyond its taste. And it 

 multiplies so rapidly that much valuable leaf is soon 

 rendered worthless for smoking. Its method of working 

 has suggested the name of weevil. The Indian tobacco 

 industry, therefore, has now to reckon with a new and 

 unscrupulous competitor in the form of the ' cigar weevil.' 

 It would be a boon to long-suffering humanity and a 

 triumph for the bacteriologist if he could manage to set one 



