l9d ciTEftPlLLAft PES^S. 



Trenching 1 is one excellent method of isolating them, and so long as 1 

 the trench has sloping sides, it need not be more than eight or ten inches 

 deep. The cultivator naturally hopes the caterpillars will go into his 

 neighbour's plot of land and does not trench to isolate them on his plot ; 

 his neighbours should trench to protect their own fields. Methods of 

 surface cultivation are useful when the caterpillars bury themselves by 

 day; light surface cultivation turns them out where the birds will eat 

 them. So also when the caterpillars disappear; probably they have 

 gone into the soil to pupate. Surface cultivation turns them out for the 

 birds to kill them. 



The principal reason why nothing is done to check these pests is that 

 they invariably disappear after a time (to pupate and come again as 

 moths). The cultivator hopes they will do no harm and sooner or later 

 sees them vanish ; he attributes this to invocations of holy men or to 

 fate, but does not realise that they will come again and are not dead but 

 undergoing metamorphosis ; should circumstances be favourable, the 

 increase of the emerging moths will be enormous. 



These pests come from jungles and waste lands ; the planting of 

 waste lands ; strips bounding on fields, boundary strips, etc., with good 

 grass would do much to check them ; trees are not liable to bring them 

 but flowering plants and low vegetation encourage them. The ideal 

 cultivated areas would include no waste lands with scrub where such 

 vegetation is growing, but only grass land and trees. 



Finally, the most important thing is to worry the caterpillars and 

 prevent them feeding. The bag, a rope, a latM, almost anything dragged 

 through an infested crop disturbs them. In a plague of swarming 

 caterpillars recently investigated, it was found that sweeping the crop 

 with a heavy lathi was sufficient to disturb the caterpillars so much that 

 they stopped feeding. It was only necessary to do this twice a day and 

 the crops were practically uninjured* 1 If it were possible to induce the 

 cultivator to do anything energetically, no matter how simple, such 

 plagues could be rendered almost harmless. 



Surface Caterpillars. 



Caterpillars, which hide by day in the soil and come out at night to 

 eat vegetation or to cut off young plants, are commonly known by the 

 above name, or in America as " cut-worms." They are large, smooth 

 caterpillars coloured in dirty brotofy green or neutral tints, with obscure 

 longitudinal Iines 3 or in some cases with black spots* "When handled 



1 Report of C. B. Misra and D. K. al* 



