68 THE AGRICULTURAL PESTS OF INDIA. 



Heliocopis cupido larva? attack the cotton plant in its 

 bud. The larvae are dispersed by sprinkling ashes over 

 the plant. 



Heliothis armigera, one of the Gryllidse, is very gener- 

 ally diffused through Upper Bengal, the North-Western 

 Provinces, and the Panjab. It attacks the leaves and cap- 

 sules of the poppy and all the various pulses, especially the 

 mussoors (Ervum lens),chana (Cicer arietinum), and mutur 

 (Pisum sativum), less frequently urhur (Cajanus Indicus), 

 boring into poppy capsules, and feeding on the seeds. 

 With the poppy, the caterpillars feed from the lower leaves 

 up to the capsule, which they penetrate, and there pass 

 into the pupa and perfect form, the male moth being" 

 of a pale orange colour, one female colouring being of a 

 darker and another of a paler hue. But the imprisoned 

 moth rarely makes its escape from the capsule ; indeed, 

 scarcely one in ten gets out ; and they have vigilant 

 foes in the mynas, which, perching on the bored capsules, 

 watch the operations of the caterpillar, and should it 

 appear at the aperture, the myna immediately strikes, 

 and rarely fails in withdrawing it in whole or in part. 

 Mr. John Scott asserts that neither this caterpillar nor 

 any other with which he made experiments will attack 

 the parts of the opium poppy when in any way replete 

 with a normally concentrated milk - sap. Heliothis 

 armigera suddenly in the season of 187778 attacked 

 the poppy crops in the Patna and Shahabad districts. 

 Careful hand - picking of the affected capsules was 

 the only remedy suggested. It has, at different times, 

 proved most destructive to cotton crops, eating into 

 the capsules. The opium poppy is not supposed to 

 be its natural food. One species occurs in Kashmir. 

 J. Scott. 



