82 Indian Museum Note?. \ Vol- III. 



much easier in Calcutta to procure sugarcane stalks than either sorghum 



or maize stalks, sugarcane Was used for rearing the borers sent to tl. e 

 Museum as attacking both maize and sorghum. Borers taken out of 

 maize shoots were reared in sugarcane from the time they were com- 

 paratively small caterpillars until they emeiged as moths, and a. sor- 

 ghum borer (the only one of a set received from Poena that escaped 

 the chalcid parasite) was reared in sugarcane from the time it was 

 a half-grown caterpillar until it reached the chrysalis stage, when 

 it was accidentally injured and thus prevented from emerging as a moth. 

 The caterpillars taken both from maize and sorghum stalks seemed 

 none the worse for being fed upon sugarcane, and this appears of itself 

 to be a strong reason for supposing that the three insects are identical- 

 It would settle the point however if it should prove that the America ii 

 species which has now been shown to attack all three plants is also the 

 one that occurs in India, and a moth therefore, reared from sugarcane 

 in Calcutta, has been sent to Washington for comparison with the speci- 

 mens that have been reared in the United States 1 . 



The following letters, furnished in response to inquiries made by the 

 Grain storage to exclude Director of Mines and Agriculture in New 

 weevil. South Wales, on the subject of the methods 



adopted in Australia and the United States for protecting grain from 

 weevil, are of interest in view of the great injury done by grain weevils 

 in India. 



In the October number cf the Agricultural Gazelle of New South 

 Wales (Sydney, 1891), the Under-Secretary to the Queensland Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture writes — 



"The system, of storing maize in tanks has been in vogue in this colony for some 

 time past, but I am not aware, nor have 1 heard, that the tanks are made of steel. 

 Tanks of various kinds and shapes have been used, from the square 400-gallon ship 

 tanks to the round corrugated-iron tank of the cottage; then, again, tanks of galva- 

 nized iron have been specially constructed, having a capacity to suit the amount of 

 grain to be stored. Several of our farmers have tanks of a capacity of 1,000 gallons 

 in use, some even being larger, and fitted with traps at the bottom to facilitate dis- 

 charge when bagging. .Different methods of securing the keeping qualities of the 



1 In reply Dr. Riley, the United States Entomologist, writes : "I must confess that I 

 am rather disappointed in finding that your sugarcane borer is not the same as ours. It is 

 a Chilo and not a Diatraea, and comes near C. plejadellus Zinck. which lores into rice in 

 our Southern States, but it differs in the very clear cut terminal dark line between the 

 black spots and fringe. The specimen is badly rubbed, and I cannot be certain of its exact 

 specific position. It is possible that it may be identical with Chilo infuscatellus Snell., which 



infests sugarcane in Java I believe that you are perfectly right in assuming that the 



borers in sugarcane, sorghum, and maize are all the same, and it is interesting to know 

 that at least one other crambid agrees with 1). saccharalis in this particular." 



