80 THE AGRICULTURAL PESTS OF INDIA. 



disappeared in the middle of 1883. Not only was the 

 coffee blighted, but the grass meadows and the forest 

 trees were covered with a fungoid disease. In Sumatra, 

 not alone the buffaloes suffered ; numbers of the elephants, 

 the deer, and the wild pigs died in the forests, and by 

 preying on the dying herds even tigers fell victims to the 

 pestilence. In Timor, also, in the higher parts of the 

 island, the cattle were attacked ; while in the southern 

 plains, the pigs and the horses, which there run wild in 

 herds, were found scattered about in the forest dead. 



The elephants, sometimes solitary, sometimes in herds, 

 at times do much injury to villages. 



The shrews passing over food articles so taint them 

 with the musky odour as to make them useless. 



The porcupine does much harm to plantations. 



The wolves, wild dogs, and jackals hunt in packs, but 

 there is no record of the wild dog destroying man. Not 

 so of the other two. 



In 1874, Dy. Surgeon General John Shortt proposed a 

 very effective mode of destroying tigers, to which effect 

 might be given. 



In India the wild boar frequently occupies a patch of 

 sugar-cane. 



While man and domesticated animals have to be pro- 

 tected against the attacks of carnivorous mammals, the 

 horned cattle of India demand from man a special care. 

 They are the agriculturists' chief wealth ; and anthrax, 

 rinderpest, dysentery, and epizootic aphtha inflict vast 

 losses. Beginnings have been made. The Madras 

 Government has (18 8 6) an Inspector and Deputy-Inspector 

 of Cattle Diseases, with fourteen local inspectors ; and the 

 Glanders and Farcy Act (Act xx. of 1879) of the Govern- 

 ment of India was framed to stamp out these diseases. 



