32 The Tea insects of India. 



the marks left upon leaves by the two forms. Under these eircnmstanees 

 the reports which frequently appear of the finding of mosquito blight 

 upon plants other than tea must be received with caution. It is 

 worthy of note, however, that a species of Helopeltis so nearly allied to 

 Eelopeltis theivora as to have been considered, by so competent an 

 observer as the late Mr. E. T. Atkinson, to be but a variety of this 

 species, were forwarded to the Indian Museum in January 1888 from 

 Munghu, Sikkim, where they had been found on cinchona. Again, the 

 species Helopeltis antonii, Sign., which Wood-Mason notices is so closely 

 allied to the Assam form as to have been considered by no less an 

 authority than the late Professor Westwood to be only a variety of it, 

 has been reported by Dr. Trimen as having " caused much alarm by its 

 depredations on cacao and cinchona plantations" in Ceylon.* Under 

 these circumstances the subject would seem to require further investiga- 

 tion as it has an important bearing upon the question, ^hich has not 

 yet been satisfactorily settled, of what becomes of the insect when 

 off the tea. 



Owing to finding the eggs of the insect on the young shoots, Wood- 

 Mason suggested the vigorous and unremit- 

 ting plucking of the blighted portions of 

 bushes as likely to mitigate the evil. This treatment would no doubt tend 

 to be beneficial, but cannot be looked upon as complete in itself, for 

 Dudgeon has since shown that the eggs are largely to be found upon 

 the portion of the green shoot which is passed over by the leaf-pluckers 

 as too hard for manufacture into tea. 



The following account of what was actually done upon a tea garden 

 in Dibrugarh is quoted from a report by the Manager, published, without 

 date, as an appendix to Atkinson's paper in Indian Museum Notes, Vol, I, 

 page 185 : — 



" Now to reply to your inquiries about what we did to get rid of the ' Mosquitoes.* 

 To begin with, before we stopped plucking last year, and while the blight was at its worst 

 (about September and October), I started cutting down a ' belt ' of jungle 80 yards wide 

 all round the edge of the garden ; this ' belt' was completed about the same time as the 

 pruning of the garden was finished (the end of February this was) : well, then I commenced 

 lighting fires all over the place ; in the tea the prunings were being reduced to 

 ashes as rapidly as the cut-down jungle in the belt was being burnt up; by the 

 middle of March I finished all the burning I wanted to do, and then every soul was put 

 on to hoe round the bushes, taJce away all stale earth from near the stumps of the 

 plants, and fill in fresh earth. The pruning I went in for last cold weather was most 

 severe : the whole of the garden nearly was cut down to within eight inches of the 

 ground ; all knotty and gnarled wood was removed, and nothing but straight wood left. 

 During the pruning, icomediately following up the pruners were gangs of women and 

 children armed with small knives whose only work was to rid the bushes of every leaf 

 and small twig. To protect the plants from the flames (while the prunings were being 



' Vide Nature, Vol. XXX, p. 634 (1884). 



