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A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF THE COCCID^ OF 

 WESTERN INDIA. 



BY 



Ramrao S. Kasaegode. 



The coccidse of Western India are a group of insects which have been 

 very little collected and about which in this area very little is known. 

 When one compares the enormous mass of information about them as they 

 occur in Ceylon, which has been collected about them by Mr, E. E. Green, 

 and the considerable amount of knowledge which we have of them in 

 North-East India, particularly as they occur in tea, the paucity of know- 

 ledge as regards them in Western India is the more remarkable. And this 

 lack of information is not because of any lack of importance. The scale 

 insects have proved themselves among the worst of agricultural pests, and 

 particularly pests of fruit trees. Although they are not so obvious in 

 Western India as in some other parts even of India, yet they occur abun- 

 dantly on many fruit trees. The mango tree alone has revealed a number 

 of species living upon it and upon the Loranthus (bandgul) parasite which is 

 always associated with it. They are very common on the fruit of the betel- 

 nut palm — one of the most valuable of our fruit trees. They constantly 

 occur on various citrus fruits, and in at least one case form a 

 serious pest. And there are many others. All these are at present 

 perhaps not very obvious, but there is no group of insects whose existence 

 should be watched with a more jealous eye, as they spread when the condi- 

 tions are favourable with marvellous rapidity, and what was an entomo- 

 logical curiosity belonging to the group of scale insects, has on several occa- 

 sions in the history of agriculture, become in a few years a public menace. 



The cause of the lack of attention devoted to scale insects in Western 

 India has been probably the small amount of attention devoted to the 

 growth of perennial crops like trees and shrubs. Most agriculture is that 

 of annual crops, while the scale insects are peculiarly the pests of such 

 plants as stand from year to year. Fruit culture is now increasing in im- 

 portance : with this increase, the danger of these pests, and the interest 

 they will evoke will undoubtedly increase. 



A word of explanation will not be out of place in connection with the 

 growth of individual species to the magnitude of pests. Most of the species 

 except a few are quite harmless and are for the present only entomological 

 curiosities. Mainly this is due to the inter-relation of parasitic and pre- 

 dacious insects on the one hand and scale insects on the other. The balance 

 of life which now exists between the two classes of insects, one preying 

 upon the other, may be disturbed in many ways. Cutting and clearing 

 large mixed forest growth and establishing either tea or coffee has, for in- 

 stance, enabled the tea and coffee pests to breed and multiply to such 

 nunabers that we recognize them as serious pests. 



, The following is an account of such species which I have been able to 

 collect in Western India up to the present. The identifications have been 

 made or confirmed in each case, with very great kindness, by Mr. E. E. 

 Green, late of Ceylon. 



Sub-family — DiASPiNiE . 

 Aspidiotus destructor, Sign. — This coccid has so far been only found on 

 the mango tree {Wlangifera indica), but practically every mango tree I have 

 examined showed this scale to a greater or less extent. In many cases the 

 scales fully covered the tender young branches and leaves. The upper as 

 well as the lower surfaces of leaves harbour the species. In gardens devoted 



