216 SPICES 



CHAP. 



enclose it in cloth bags to protect it, in order to obtain 

 the seed. 



PESTS 



The chief pest recorded as attacking cinnamon is a 

 boring caterpillar, which attacks the shoots. It does 

 not seem to be very injurious. A similar one attacks 

 adult trees in the Malay Peninsula, not only of Cinna- 

 momum zeylanicum, but also of C. iners. It is of a 

 pinkish red colour, and bores into the trunk often quite 

 low down, the entrance to the burrow being usually 

 protected by a web full of the frass of the grub. The 

 insect does not appear ever to have been bred to maturity 

 by entomologists, but it is the larva of a moth. 



Another pest recorded in the Ceylon Observer 1 is 

 the larva of a little moth, Metisor plana, Walker, of 

 the family of Psychidae. It appears to attack many 

 trees and shrubs in the neighbourhood of cultivated 

 land in Ceylon. The larva constructs a portable silken 

 case, more or less covered with bits of stick and leaf 

 of the food plant on which it lives and undergoes its 

 transformation. It eats the leaves and tender tops 

 of the plants, owing to which the cinnamon cannot be 

 peeled. It is difficult to deal with these bag- worms, as 

 they are commonly called, as they are so well protected 

 by their silk case that poisonous liquids thrown on them 

 do not affect them. Mr. Green, who identified them, 

 suggests that washing the trees with lime-water, or 

 syringing with soft-soap and tobacco water might 

 induce them to depart. The "experienced planter" 

 already quoted mentions a minute beetle which breeds 

 in the leaves, and sometimes does a good deal of injury 

 by retarding the growth and rendering the wood un- 

 healthy and unpeelable. 



The larva of what is probably one of the Tortricidae 

 moths I have frequently seen in the leaves of adult 

 trees, both of C. zeylanicum and 0. iners. It spins 

 two leaves together, feeding on the epidermis and de- 



1 All about Spices, p. 226. 



