PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 457 
to the soil, as the wood is fit for nothing—not even for fuel. On all the 
other estates they had the same story to relate, and at the end of the year 
1839 not one of those noble palm trees remained alive, which, to the number 
of 20,000, had graced this barren island only a year before. 
“ As for the appearance of the insect which caused this calamity, I can 
only say that, like other larvee of Aleyrodes, it was not even so big as the 
head of the smallest pin in common use, and was of nearly circular outline, 
but quite flat, and as thin as the finest paper. It never moved that I could 
see, and seemed as if glued to the leaf, on which myriads of them were 
huddled together. 
“Having thus been an eye-witness in the case, you may judge of my 
-astonishment when, only last year, I was informed here at the Hague by a 
professional entomologist of some repute, that from the communication of 
a friend of his who visited Curagao many years after the above-mentioned 
occurrence, he felt convinced that the cocoa-nut trees in that island have 
been destroyed by the caterpillar of a nocturnal lepidopteron. This absurd 
notion I have not been able to dispel, not even by producing extracts from 
the colonial newspaper, because, said he, although it appears therefrom 
that the colonists hold the same opinion as I do, yet the question remained 
whether that opinion is the right one. In reply, I can only say that 
I never expected an entomologist to believe on mere hearsay that any 
butterfly will soar to a height of sixty to eighty feet above the ground to 
lay its eggs in trees which have so little to attract them as those of the 
order Palme, whose leaves, from their texture, are unfit to serve as food 
for the larve of Lepidoptera. 
“Passing from this subject to that of the destruction of the cocoa-nut 
trees in the coast regions of Guiana, here in Holland it seems nobody ever 
heard of those trees suffering from insects in Surinam. I beg to refer to 
Mr. Russell’s report on the Aleyrodes, as well as on the beetle, which, long 
before the arrival of the first-mentioned insect, about three or four years 
ago, used to spoil the said trees in those districts, and which report must 
have reached you long since, as it was read at one of the monthly meetings 
of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society in Demerara, and 
printed in the ‘Royal Gazette’ (George Town, British Guiana), of the 
4th March, 1876. 
«“ From that paper, I see, Mr. Russell says his friend Dr. Whitlock calls 
the beetle Passalus tridens, which, so far as I know, may be very correct, 
though, judging from the appearance of one I saw in the museum at 
Leyden, I should not have thought it capable of boring holes which have 
been compared by Mr. Russell to those made by means of an augur. Among 
the eight species of Passalus enumerated by Dr. Dalton, in his ‘ History of 
British Guiana,’ I do not find this one; but, of course, that is no reason 
why it should not be found there, as the author himself does not pretend to 
3.N 
