THE AGRICULTURAL PESTS OF INDIA. Ill 



valuable buildings in which wood forms a part are 

 damaged by them. Teak-wood is not attacked. Their 

 nests are raised about 3 or 4 feet in height above ground, 

 brought up from below as they form the galleries. These 

 nests largely harbour the poisonous cobra, and are sites 

 for the serpent-worship of the Hindoos. 



Tetranichidse, the spinning mites, a section of the class 

 Arachnoidea. Its genus Tetranychus has many species, 

 and one of them, T. papaverge, the poppy seed mite, is an 

 enemy of the poppy. T. telarius is the red spider. 

 Tetranychus papavene, one of the Trornbidina, attacks in 

 swarms the poppy seed in the granaries and store 

 pots, reducing it to chaff and dust, and their excreta 

 glueing the seed together in pellets more or less bulky. 

 It looks like a minute spider, being not more than a line in 

 length, shining, and of a rich claret colour. It multiplies 

 with great rapidity. A little powdered camphor sprinkled 

 among the store pots is an effectual preventive of this 

 pest, which, with species of Bruchus, Calandra, Sitona, and 

 Tipula, are the chief depredators on the poppy seed store 

 pots in Lower Bengal. Tetranychus bioculatus is the 

 tea-mite or red spider of Assam planters. J. Scott. See 

 Tea-bug. 



Thrips adonidum, a small hemipterous insect, which, like 

 other members of this order, is provided with a beak or 

 rostrum specially adapted for piercing and sucking and 

 feeding on the juices of the leaves and softer parts of 

 plants. It punctures and destroys the whole surface of 

 the poppy leaf. It is one of the many kinds of minute 

 insects which the natives of Northern India called Lhi. 

 Their black glutinous excreta, voided on the leaf of the 

 poppy, suppress respiration, and the whole leaf dries up 

 and withers. It destroys the seed produce of the poppy, 



