The Tea insects of India. 



in March 1890 from caterpillars forwarded from Oudh the same year. 

 The Museum also possesses a moth from Jessore dated September. It 

 may be concluded that in Northern India the insect goes through several 

 generations in the course of the year. The precise habits in this respect, 

 however, have yet to be observed in connection with tea. 



Digging the caterpillars out by hand or flooding them out of their 

 burrows with water and then collecting them seem to be the most satis- 

 factory methods of dealing with the pest. 



According to Scott, who observed the insect in poppy-fields in Behar 

 between the years 1874 and 1878, the cultivator goes round his poppy- 

 plot in the morning, armed with a spade, with which he digs out the 

 caterpillar wherever he sees the protruding leaves and stalks which 

 mark the creature's burrow. Irrigation also is employed to bring the 

 caterpillars to the surface, where thsy are fed upon by crows, mynas, 

 starlings, cattle egrets and other birds, though these creatures are not 

 sufficient by themselves to keep down the number of the insect. Scott 

 adds that the pest can easily be checked by dusting the plants over a 

 few times in the evenings with a mixture of quicklime and ashes, but 

 he notices that the cultivators generally do not resort to this method. 



Achsea melicerte, Drury. The caterpillar of this moth was re- 

 ported from Dehra Dun in August 1892 as doing some damage to tea. 

 It first appeared in the early part of the rainy season on the tallow tree 

 {Sajpium sehiferum) ^ and seems oaly to have attacked the tea plant to 

 save itself from starvation after all the leaves on tlie tallow trees had 

 been devoured. 



The species has been sent to the Indian Museum on numerous occa- 

 sions as attacking a variety of crops in India, and as it has also been 

 recorded as occurring in the Malay Archipelago and in Australia, its 

 range must be extensive. Its principal food plant in India appears to 

 be castor oil, which it often completely defoliates. It is said to pupate 

 in the leaf, and the fact that caterpillars have reached the Indian 

 Museum in such different seasons as January, July, August, and 

 September, makes it likely that a number of generations are gone 

 through in the course of the year. In the rainy season in Dehra Dun 



