86 ENEMIES AND REMEDIES. 



The majority of the eggs are deposited, but are dor- 

 mant during the wet season — that is, from March to 

 May, The disease manifests itself by the appearance of 

 large, discolored blotches on the leaves, causing their 

 decay and fall. As a remedy, it has been stated that by 

 picking the leaves at such a time, as to take the greatest 

 number of the larvae when about two weeks* old, it 

 would be easy to destroy the pest, as the size of the 

 blotches would then easily distinguish the diseased 

 foliage. Again, each of these contains several hundred 

 eggs undergoing incubation, and in a short time the 

 whole of the green wood of the tree will become cov' 

 ered with the young insects and coated with a black, 

 soot-like powder, which renders the tree easily dis- 

 cernible at a distance. The bug will soon spread over 

 the whole plantation, entirely checking the growth of 

 the trees, the fresh, young shoots being always first 

 attacked, and such wood as is allowed to mature, pro- 

 duces hardly any crops; the berries, moreover, are in the 

 earliest stages destroyed by these insects, which cut them 

 off with the stalk. The measures recommended for 

 checking this scourge are to dust the bushes with a 

 mixture of powdered saltpetre and quicklime in equal 

 parts, or to brush or sponge the affected parts with a 

 mixture of soft-soap, tar, tobacco and spirits of turpen- 

 tine, in about equal quantities. The white bug is a dis- 

 tinct species of insect, known as Fsedococcus adovibntm, 

 and is a small, flat, oval iniect, about one-sixteenth of an 

 inch long, covered with, a white down or fur, having par- 

 allel ridges running /icross its back from side to side, 

 like the wood-louse, though on a much smaller scale. 

 It is found in various, stages of development all the year 

 round, and takes up its quarters on the roots of the 

 Coffee trees, to start one part beneath the surface, at the 



