ENEMIES. 125 



deposits Us larva there is entomologically inaccurate. 

 If the trees attacked are pulled down sideways 

 they snap off at the point where the grub inside 

 commenced its upward progress, and the only thing 

 to do is to burn them and their intruder, replanting 

 the vacancy or suffering the stump to throw up a 

 sucker, which it will often do. Dr. Bidie thinks 

 " shade " is amongst the best remedies we have 

 for this pest, not so troublesome now, however, as 

 it was some time ago. 



Certain weevils members of a very world-wide 

 and everywhere destructive order occasionally do 

 damage on the estates, especially one small brilliant 

 green species which covers acres of plants and eats 

 up every leaf. P. L. Simmonds' statement, again, 

 that it is " two and a-half inches long by one 

 broad," we take it, is a slip of a generally cautious 

 pen. 



Besides these beetles there is the white ant, 

 which plasters our bushes up to their crowns with 

 hard mortar, effectually smothering them. In some 

 districts it is unknown, in others it is a dreaded foe. 

 Although white ants, says the Friend of India, are 

 a pest as much to certain crops as to anything 

 else, they are said to perform a service to agri- 

 culture on unoccupied ground similar to that per- 

 formed by the earthworm in England. They are 

 specially destructive to sugar-cane, and have actually 

 been the cause of stopping the cultivation of the 

 cane in several pergunnahs of the Cawnpore and 



