SOME INSECT PESTS OF THE SUGAR-CANE. 
By Joun J. Quetcu, B.Sc. (Lond.) 
The sugar planter in his fight against insect pests labours under serious dis- 
advantages, which are accentuated under the unique conditions prevailing in this 
colony. He is mainly troubled here by forms which are normal feeders on native 
wild plants ; and these plants are either indigenous in the cultivated areas, or 
are characteristic of districts not far removed, from which incursions or introduc- 
tion of insects may take place. In both cases the numbers in which they occur, 
and the localities over which they are spread, render extermination an impossi- 
bility. 
Beyond this, too, the conditions for transportation and drainage on this low- 
lying coastland, provide an ideal and equable breeding-ground for insects living 
on the cane. The regular system of navigation canals throughout the cultiva- 
tion, affords constant supplies of water, thus minimising the effects of drought ; 
while the draining trenches and pumps for carrying off the super-abundant rain- 
fall , prevent the destruction of ground and root pests by complete flooding. 
In the case of plants cultivated for their foliage, flowers or fruit, it is compara- 
tively easy, by means of their open spaces, to detect the beginning of insect 
ravages ; and it is therefore more than likely that steps could be taken, at a 
sufficiently early time, to deal with them in the most effective manner possible. 
With the sugar cane cultivation, it is markedly otherwise, since an enormous 
number of plants are so thickly crowded, and generally over such an extensive 
area, as to render observation and treatment inoperative or difficult, except 
under the special conditions of complete and frequent dry trashing, or in the 
very earliest stages of growth, or after cropping. 
The pests that feed upon the leaves of the cane are comparatively unimportant, 
and the damage trivial ; though it must not be forgotten that any, or all of 
these, may some day become a veritable plague, if successive increase of gen- 
erations goes unchecked. From their external position, however, such forms 
are always subject to the attacks of natural enemies which may reduce their 
numbers, keeping them in check, or even exterminating them in definite localities. 
The difficulties lie with those that are internal, feeding on the substance of 
the cane, such as the giant and the small moth-borer, and the weevil-borer, or 
with those that take refuge under the clasping bases of the leaves, sucking out the 
sap, such as the common pink scale insect, so generally known as the mealy-bug. 
These are sheltered and protected from many of the natural agencies which 
would serve to diminish them, and their protection is made more secure from the 
fact that they occur, in one or other of the stages of their life history, in just those 
parts of the cane that are used in carrying on the cultivation from one crop to 
another. Thus, after cropping, the giant moth-borer and the weevil-borer are 
found mainly in the stumps which are ratooned, and the small moth-borer and the 
mealy-bug in the tops which are used for plants; though frequently young 
specimens of the former are also found in the plant tops (especially if they have 
