I2O COFFEE I ITS CULTIVATION AND PROFIT. 



siderably in order to make them combine." The 

 same may be said of a species of the delightful 

 little palm squirrel (Gilehri, in Hindi ; Beral, Lakki, 

 in Bengali ; Alalu, in Canarese; Vodata, in Telegu), 

 which comes up after the monsoon and takes a 

 small per-centage of Coffee cherries, leaving the 

 undigestable seeds in its track along logs and 

 branches. Few birds are accused of doing damage 

 to Coffee. On the contrary, most species should 

 be encouraged by every possible means (a view, we 

 are glad to see, that has just been accepted by the 

 Ceylon Planters' Association), for they are un- 

 doubted destroyers of much undesirable insect life. 

 Amongst the 



INSECTS 



Are some of the worst foes the planter has to reckon 

 with. One of these, " the grub," is the fat yellow 

 larva of a species of cockchafer, a creature doing 

 much harm even in England. One Superintendent 

 writes as follows : 



" The instinct and voracity of these creatures are mar- 

 vellous, for they will destroy and greedily devour almost any 

 vegetable or animal substance they fall in with, and they 

 have a wonderful faculty for selecting first, as food, that which 

 is most palatable to them. Coffee rootlets seem to be their 

 special weakness ; but even the bitter rootlet of cinchona, in 

 the absence of the former, is not despised by them, nor is that 

 of grass and almost every description of weed. I am told that 

 they will not attack the roots of tea bushes, but of this I 

 am very sceptical, and, were I planting it where I knew they 

 existed, I should adopt ever}" possible means of reducing their 



