THE AGRICULTURAL PESTS OF INDIA. 53 



and vice versa. It is the most profitable of the minor 

 millets. It can be preserved for sixty years in pits, and 

 greatly advantages in dearths. Vern. Marwa. D. & F. 



Endioptis Indica attacks the cotton plant. See 

 Gossypium. 



Epeira, sp., a large red-and- black spider, about Monghir 

 on the Ganges, forms gigantic webs, stretching across the 

 paths, sufficiently strong to offer considerable opposition 

 to a traveller. The reticulated parts of the webs are of a 

 bright yellow colour, and about 5 feet in diameter, but 

 have a stretch of 10 to 20 feet, including the great guy 

 ropes, by which it is fastened to some neighbouring tree 

 or clump of bamboos. The spider sits in the centre wait- 

 ing for its prey. One of them when expanded measured 

 6 inches across the legs. Captain Sherwill found a 

 species of Nectarinia entangled in one of their webs. 



Erythrina Indica, or dadap. A letter published in the 

 Weekly Ceylon Observer for 27th November 1884 stated 

 that the coffee - leaf disease, Hernileia vastatrix, was 

 caused by planting ' dadap ' trees between the coffee 

 plants for shade, and that wherever coffee is planted on- 

 forest land, or where no ' dadap ' trees are used for shade, 

 there is no sign of leaf disease. But there has not been 

 observed in Southern India any connection between the 

 presence of erythrina trees and the production of leaf 

 disease ; on the contrary, the effect of planting erythrina 

 has been distinctly beneficial, not hurtful, to the coffee 

 trees which it is planted to shade. 



Eucheirus longimanus, a chafer that attacks the palms. 

 It is known in the Moluccas as the grand sagueir feeding 

 beetles, because they perish in thousands during the 

 night, by dropping into the palm wine collecting buckets. 

 It is one of the Lamellicorn Coleoptera. 



