No. 2.] Noles on insect pests front the Entomological Section. 39 



g._NOTE ON DORYLUS ORIENtALIS, West. 

 By E. E. Green, F.E.S. 



On page 198, Indian Museum Notes, Volume IV, No. 4, I see a 

 statement on Dr. Forel's authority that all species of Dorylus feed 

 on animal food and that Dorylus orient alls, West., cannot therefore 

 be obnoxious to potatoes. With all due deference to Dr. Forel's 

 acknowledged learning on the subject of ants, I most emphatically 

 contradict this statement, as far as it refers to Dorylus orientalis, 

 West. The. workers of this species (determined for me by Colonel 

 Bingham) live entirely underground, and I can assert from repeated 

 personal observation, that they are most confirmed vegetarians. I 

 found it quite impossible to grow potatoes in Pundalnoya, solely 

 on account of this insect, and they were most aggravating in their 

 systematic attacks upon the tubers of dahlias, and the roots of the 

 common sunflower {Helianthus, sp.). In the case of tubers they 

 form galleries through and through the substance, and in the case 

 of roots they eat off the tender bark below the collar. I have made 

 very careful observations on the point and have completely satisfied 

 myself that the Dorylus was really feeding upon the vegetable tissues, 

 and was not merely hunting for another insect. 



NOTES ON INSECT PESTS FROM THE ENTOMOLOGICAL 

 SECTION, INDIAN MUSEUM. 



During the past year we have received reports of the damages 

 done by insects to the following crops, namely, sugarcane, rice, wheat, 

 maize, millet, cotton, ground-nuts and market produce, as well as 

 to growing timber, coconut-orchards, tea-plantations and stored 

 grain. 



As these reports depend entirely on voluntary agency, and as, 

 even then, many of them are misdirected to the Economic and Art 

 Section of the Museum instead of being put at once and without any 

 retarding mediation into the hands of the Entomologist, it is difficult 

 to judge how far they cover the whole field of enquiry. But so far 

 as they go, they seem to show that the two most pronounced events 

 of the agricultural year, in this connection, have been the havoc 

 wrought by the larvae of certain moths to growing sugarcane, and the 



