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taught to recognise them and afterwards employed in picking 

 them from plantations, (b) Cutting out and burning all shoots 

 or stems that appear withered or wanting in life. Children 

 may be taught to do this also and they may be employed in 

 plantations for this purpose, (c) Keeping lighted lanterns 

 hanging in sugar-cane plantations at night, with shallow 

 vessels of water and kerosine under them. By adopting this 

 last device one can get rid of Noctuid moths and other 

 insects in large quantities. In the month of Kartik (Octo- 

 ber and November), a custom prevails in this country of 

 hanging up lights in the open at night. It may not be very 

 difficult to induce cultivators to adopt the modified custom of 

 hanging up lights in their fields with vessels of water 

 underneath, during the month of Kartik, as it is during this 

 month, as also in June and July, that moths &c. lay eggs 

 and do the greatest amount of damage to crops, though the 

 damage is most noticed later on in the season. 



CHAPTER CXX. 



WHITS-ANTS (TERMES TAPROBANES) AND OTHER ANTS. 



white ants (Neuroptera) are well known social insects 

 which make tunnels and galleries in homesteads and 

 fields, and thus do a great deal of mischief. They destroy most 

 of the ordinary timber except teak. They sometimes attack 

 roots of living plants and trees such as sugar-cane plants and 

 mango trees, gradually^ working their way upwards. The 

 males and females are furnished with four large wings of 

 equal size, but the workers or neuters have no wings. Their 

 bodies are oblong and depressed. The queen will lay 80,000 

 eggs in a day for a long time, and the enormous growth a 

 colony may undergo in a short tims miy thus b* itnigitied . 



