28 Inth'an Museum Notes. [ Vol. III. 



In February 1892 information was received through Messrs. Jardine, 



..... .. , Skinner & Co., of considerable injury to 



A cruhdaB attacking tea. -. 



young* tea [Camellia tkeifera) bushes in the 



Western Doars by Acridities. Of the insects forwarded to the Agents, 

 some were identical with specimens in the Museum collection determined 

 by Dr. De Saussure as his Catantops indicus, while others seemed to be a 

 variety of the same species, characterized by the absence of striped mark- 

 ings on the posterior femora. 



Two specimens of the species Acridium. flavicorne Fabr. were after- 

 wards forwarded as associated with the insect first reported. In the end 

 of February the Manager wrote that he had been to a great extent 

 successful in destroying the insects, and that lie had not heard of their 

 appearing on any of the neighbouring 1 gardens. The method adopted 

 was hand-collecting by children and coolies, who were paid two annas per 

 hundred insects. Up to the date of his letter, the Manager estimated 

 that he had destroyed 3 1,770 insects in this way, with the result that 

 they were getting so much scarcer that, at the time he wrote, the coolies 

 were only bringing in about £5 per cent, of the daily number they had 

 been able to obtain when hand-collecting was first started. 



Specimens of the Acridid Acridium dsruginosnm Burmeister were 

 Acrididse in Vizagapatam forwarded, in the early part of August 1891, 

 and Cuddapah. through the Madras Museum, from the Col- 



lectorate of Vizagapatam and also from that of Cuddapah for identifica- 

 tion. In the case of the specimens from Vizagapatam the females were 

 found to have their ovaries crammed with ripe eggs. Acridium (erugi- 

 nosum, therefore, is likely to have been the insect referred to by the 

 Collector of Vizagapatam, who wrote on 1 8th July that a flight of locusts 

 had recently visited the Royaghada taluk in his district and caused 

 slight damage to the standing crops. He noticed that these locusts 

 appeared to have laid eggs which had hatched. The winged insects had 

 disappeared, but the young locusts were still to be found on the hills 

 at the time the report was made. 



Acridium a>ruginosu?n is one of the six local species of Acrididae which 

 have been reported as concerned in the Madras locust invasion of 1878. 

 The flight of locusts, therefore, which visited the Vizagapatam District 

 in July 1891 must not be confused with the flights which had previously 

 invaded the whole of the Madras Presidency, and which consisted of 

 insects belonging to the very different species Acridium peregrinum Oliv. 

 which had made its way across India from the North-West Frontier. 



Unfortunately no record is forthcoming of the part played by the six 

 local species of Acrididse which were reported in connection with the 



