The Tea insects of India. 31 



"^ of an inch in length and very slender. When first laid, they 

 are hard and white in colour, but they become red before hatching-. 

 The larva feeds like its parents upon the young tea-shoots, and Harcourt 

 notices that it becomes full grown in about a week after emerging from 

 the ego-. Harcourt adds that it has the characteristic bug-like odour, and 

 that the only animal he has noticed to attack it is a small spider. In his 

 report referred to above, Wood-Mason describes the female as " provided 

 with a serrated oviposition, of the shape and sharpness of a sabre, where- 

 with to pierce holes in the soft tissues of the plant for the reception of 

 her eggs." He writes : — 



" The female deposits her eggs singly in the substance of the tendevest shoots of the 

 plant in the internodes or portions of the stem between the pekoe and the two or three 

 leaves succeeding from above downwards, and in the buds developed in the axiles of 

 plucked leaves and in the parts thereabout .... the presence and position 

 of each egg is from the first indicated on the exterior by two unequally long, glistening, 

 white bristle-like prolongations of the shell, and later by discolorntion of the point 



pierced 'i'lio respiratory processes of the egg-shell so closely resemble the 



fine pubescence which clothes the surface of the shoots as to be quite indistinguished from 

 it by the unaided eye, and, to eyes unaccustomed to zoological work, even with the aid of 



an ordinary lens In order that the reader may form some idea of the 



number of the eggs, I may state that on one occcasion I counted more than forty eggs in 

 twelve shoots taken consecutively and at random from a plucker's basket, and that on 

 another occasion I selected and plucked from one bush of a plot of tea, which was only 

 moderately blighted, four shoots with one or more eggs in each. The females appear 

 instinctively to avoid puncturing the shoots or the parts of the shoots in which they lay 

 their eggs, for one can rarely find eggs on badly-injured shoots." 



The method of oviposition has since been carefully observed by 

 Dudgeon, who has worked independently in Darjiling. His results, as 

 communicated to Indian Museum Notes, confirm in the main those quoted 

 above from Wood-Mason, who worked in Assam, and show conclusively 

 that little weight need be attached to the supposed discovery by less 

 skilled observers of other methods of depositing the eggs. 



The chief points which remain to be ascertained ia connection with 

 the life-history of the insect are the lenyth of time passed in the 

 various stages of development at different periods of the year, and the 

 method of hybernation, also the extent to which plants other than tea 

 are liable to harbour the insect. 



In 1881, when Wood-Mason visited Assam, he found that the China 

 variety of tea was alone attacked, the indigenous variety being un- 

 touched. He also reported that he had been unable to find the insect 

 either upon the weeds of tea gardens or on the vegetation of uncleared 

 and waste lands in the immediate vicinity. Dudgeon, again, has shown 

 conclusively that an insect which attacks the shrub Maesa indica in 

 Darjiling, is totally distinct from mosquito blight, though it is liable 

 to be mistaken for the latter on account of the resemblance between 



