Miscellaneous. 315 
which they are washed in order to free them from the matter that 
still adheres and binds them together. ‘They are now laid out to 
dry and bleach on rude frames of split bamboo. The process of 
steeping, washing, and exposing to the sun is repeated for some days 
until the fibres are considered to be properly bleached. Without 
further preparation they are sent into town for exportation to China. 
Nearly all the islands near Singapore are more or less planted 
with pineapples, which at a rough estimate cover an extent of two 
thousand acres. ‘The enormous quantity of leaves that are annually 
suffered to putrefy on the ground would supply fibre for a large 
manufactory of valuable pina cloth. The fibre should be cleaned on 
the spot. Fortunately the pineapple planters are not Malays, but 
industrious and thrifty Bugis, most of whom have families. ‘These 
men could be readily induced to prepare the fibres. Let any mer- 
chant offer an adequate price, and a steady annual supply will soon 
be obtained.— From the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern 
Asia, No. 8, Aug. 1848. 
Advantages accruing from the Study of Entomology. 
To estimate in their true extent the important bearings of Ento- 
mology on our pecuniary interests, we must not confine our attention 
to the hundreds of thousands of pounds which we annually lose from 
the attacks of the hop-fly, the turnip-flea, the wire-worm, the weevil, 
and the host of insect-assailants of our home agricultural and horti- 
cultural produce, but we must extend our views to our colonies, and 
we shall there find that m Australia the potato crops (as we learn 
from Mr. Thwaites) are in some quarters wholly cut off by the 
potato-bug; that in the West Indies, in addition to the numerous 
and long-known insect-enemies of the sugar-cane, a new pest of the 
Coccus-tribe, sent us by Dr. Davy, has lately attacked it in Barbados, 
and the cocoa-nut trees in the same island have nearly fallen a sacri- 
fice to a minute Aleyrodes referred to by Sir Robert Schomburgk ; 
while in India the cotton crops are often seriously injured by insects 
of various tribes, whose history we have yet to learn; and in Ceylon, 
the Governor, Lord Torrington, states, in a letter addressed last year 
to Earl Grey, so serious have the attacks of the ‘‘Coffee-bug”’ (a 
species of Coccus or scale-insect, said to be allied to C. Adonitdum) 
proved for the last few years to ‘the coffee-plantations, that the pro- 
duce of one estate, which had in former years been 2000 ewt. of 
coffee, fell suddenly to 700 ewt. wholly from the destruction caused 
by the bug; and a similar heavy loss as to other coffee-plantations 
is confirmed by Mr. Gardner, who speaks of the insect as not con- 
finmg its ravages to these, but spreading to other trees and plants, 
as limes, guavas, myrtles, roses, &c. -» 80 that in the Ceylon Botanic 
Garden there is scarcely a tree not in some measure affected. 
It appears highly probable, from facts collected by Mr. Gardner, 
and quoted in the ‘ Gardener’s Chronicle’ of Oct. 7, 1848, p. 667, 
that this coffee-bug was introduced into Ceylon with some Mocha 
coffee-plants brought from Bombay ; and it is equally probable, as 
