TROCEEDINGS OF THE TIIIED ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING 791 



■they have got a number of long, succulent stems. The plants appear 

 very trim, bushy and luxuriant hi growth with a good number of 

 healthy stems. The produce from the trees is either reserved for seed 

 or scraped and sold locally. The little extra income that the cultivator 

 gets is used to pay the rents, leaving the produce of the fields for the 

 use of his family. A cultivator having 10 to 20 trees pollards 10 trees 

 during December when they are dormant and utihzes the broodlac from 

 the other trees for inoculating them in June and selling the surplus as 

 broodlac in the local Jidt. In this way, he seldom gets seed from outside 

 and is able to utilize the ZizyjjJms trees fully for the production of lac. 

 When the market rates for stick-lac are high, the cilltivator is able to 

 pay off the rents from the sale proceeds of his trees, without having , the 

 necessity of obtaining money on loan. In pruning, inoculating, cuttmg 

 and scraping lac from trees on his field-embankments, the cultivator 

 is assisted by the members of his family and has not to pay for extra 

 labour. This leaves him an ample margin wherewith to continue the 

 cultivation from year to year. An extension of this system widely 

 throughout the districts and the adjoining places is bound to improve 

 the material condition of the cultivators, as with the sale proceeds of 

 the subsidiary produce they will be able to pay off the rent, thereby 

 retainmg the produce of the fields entirely to themselves. In doing 

 this not much time or labour is required and the whole work is managed 

 easily by a cultivator assisted by the members of his family. At least 

 I was much struck with the w^ay the whole work was carried on and I 

 wish this system could be adopted in other similar tracts of land where 

 rice is the principal crop. 



Bomhaij. In the Presidency not much lac is either grown or collected, 

 but whatever little is obtained it is collected in Kolaba, Surat, North 

 Thana, Central Thana, South Thana, Panch Mahals, North Khandesh, 

 West Khandesh, East Khandesh, Nasik, Satara, Ah Raj pur, Udaipur, 

 Deogad, Baruja and Hyderabad in Sind. The principal foodplants 

 are Butea, Ficus spp., Schleichem, Zizyplms jujuba and Z. xylopym, 

 Alhizzia lehbek, Acacia arabica, Acacia catechu, Xylia dolabriformis, 

 Prosopis spicigera and Eugenia dalbergioides. 



In Sind lac grows on Acacia arabica in the Jerruk forests near Hydera- 

 bad. Besides this tract, I have not seen any other tract where lac is 

 found growing by itself on the Acacia trees. The reason why the insect 

 should not flourish on the same food-plants, say in the north of Sind, 

 is not known. In the neighbourhood of Hyderabad in Sind the insect 

 -is said to flourish well on such trees only as are either low in vitahty 

 or are about to die. The reason why the insect should show partiality 

 for such trees only is not la^o^vn. I think in the first i^lace it has to be 



