TERMITES. 459 



nada forwarded to the Council of the Society of 

 Jamaica, elaborate delineations of a fly that had con- 

 siderably damaged the growing canes in that island, 

 which they call the cane-fly. It was a four winged 

 fly that punctured the leaf, and deposited numerous 

 black eggs ; but when considerable apprehensions 

 were entertained for the consequences to the yielding 

 crop of canes, the planter was relieved by a little 

 parasitic insect which made its appearance among 

 them, and after fastening on the back of the per- 

 forated fly, devoured it, and rid them of this hitherto 

 unobserved pest. This cane-fly appeared to be our 

 Delphax saccharivora, a visitor as yet only known in 

 St. Thomas in the East. 



•* I have yet to notice the Termite. However dis- 

 astrous to the planter may be the visitation of the 

 insects we have described, they seem to me all of 

 limited injuriousness compared to the havoc com- 

 mitted by the Ground Termite. The common ap- 

 pellation of Borer has been given to two very dis- 

 similar insects, the Calandra sacchari and the 

 Diatrcea sacchari ; the one a beetle, the other a 

 moth. The transformations which these two insects 

 undergo in their respective seasons bring their de- 

 predations to an end before they have gone beyond 

 some three or four joints of the mature sugar cane ; 

 but the ground Termites devour the entire stock, 

 ascend from the root to the crown of the plant, 

 change the whole vegetable mass from a saccharine to 

 an acidulous pulp, and establish themselves in consi- 

 derable patches in some of the most favourably grow- 

 ing fields. The destruction of the plant for all sugar- 



