No. 4] Miscellaneous Notes. 197 



" It has been found in this farm that even healthy, young, immatured stalks of 

 jowari produce similar effect as described in your notes. Bullocks finding their way, 

 through the negligence of their keepers, into young Jowari fields, feed greedily upon the 

 succulent stalks. If not disturbed, tbey consume a large quantity and exhibit, after a 

 time, the following symptoms : — They look drowsy, standing with their legs thrown out 

 and head drooping, as if unable to support it. They stagger along with difficulty. 

 The belly also is distended. They altogether impress one with the idea that they are 

 intoxicated with spirit. If taken care of and the symptoms of poison looked after, 

 they generally recover. Of course cattle that have been starving before will have a 

 very little chance of recovery after a feed in a young Jowari field. Complaints have 

 also reached us as regards ' the poisonous property ' of a young crop of Sorghum 

 saccharatum. It may, therefore, be concluded that all those plants which develop 

 sugar in their matured stage possess, while young, some deleterious] agent in their com- 

 position which is the real cause of the injurious effect produced by them. 



" The Sorghum Borer, by checking the growth of jowari and thus leaving it in an 

 immatured stage, may produce similar poisonous effect on cattle. It is, therefore, not 

 the direct cause of the poisoning of cattle feeding upon plants attacked by it. 



" The nature of this substance is not yet known and cannot be determined till a 

 series of analyses be made during the several stages of the growth of the plant." 



From Messrs. Octavius Steel & Co. were received, 11th October 1889, 



„ . , .„ some specimens of a caterpillar covered with urti- 



Urticating caterpillars. ' . . r 



eating hairs, lhe specimens, though too much de- 

 cayed for precise determination, were obviously the larva? of a moth be- 

 longing to the group Bombyces. 



The following is an extract from the letter of the Manager of the tea 

 estate in South Sylhet where the insects were found :• — 



"By to-day's post I send you in a bottle a number of caterpillar-looking insects 

 that have been giving me a lot of trouble this year, not destroying the bushes but 

 laming the coolies. I have sixty coolies incapacitated from work owing to this. The 

 caterpillars, or whatever they are, lie under the edge of the bush and the coolie treads 

 on them when plucking ; his foot begins to pain, and if not on the hard sole a blister 

 rises, and until this forms into a wound and suppurates he suffers agony and can't 

 walk at all." 



Information has been received through Mr. Lionel de Nieeville of 

 Mosquito blight and injury done during the past year to tea in Sikkim 

 Bed spider in Sikkim. by He i ope i tis Ueivora (Mosquito blight) and Tetra- 

 nychns lioculatus (Red spider). 



The Eed spider attacks the tea in spring and early summer, while the 

 Mosquito blight is found during August and September and confines its 

 ravages chiefly to elevations below 2,000 feet. On one tea estate alone 

 the loss caused by the Mosquito blight in the past year was estimated at 

 300 maunds of tea, valued at R20,000; that done by the Red spider 

 being even greater. It is said that the Mosquito blight has only 

 appeared of late years in Sikkim, with the cessation of the practice of 

 annually burning the jungle, 



