NO. 3.] Original Communications. 67 



There are several broods of the pest during the year, but it is not 

 known how many. It is this great productiveness that renders this 

 insect so dangerous, as for several months during the growing season 

 the borers are continually at work. 



Distribution. — <Chilo simplex is to be found all over India. It 

 has been reported from the North-Western Provinces under the local 

 name of silai and from Cawnpore where it is called reotha ; from 

 Baroda where it flourishes under the name of narkote, from the 

 Rungpur, Burdwan, and Hooghly Districts as dhosah, from Mymen- 

 singh as mandaruah ) from Sibpur as majera and from Ganjam as 

 monjikila purugu. It occurs also in Chittagong where I have 

 watched it. 



Reports of bad attacks in the cane fields.— Ks I have already 

 mentioned, reports of s bad attacks of this pest have been received 

 from various parts of India. In 1857, Babu Joykissen Mukerji 

 described l the total destruction by the pest he called 'dhosah' of an 

 imported variety of sugarcane (known as the Bombay or red sugar- 

 cane) in the districts of Rungpur, Hooghly, and a portion of Burdwan. 

 The cultivation of this variety had been carried on for some years, 

 and had proved very profitable, but when the pest appeared, its 

 cultivation had to be entirely given up, as it was found to be very 

 much more subject to attack than the country varieties of cane. The 

 'dhosah ' proved to be the sugarcane borer Chilo simplex. In 1888, 

 the Personal Assistant to the Director of Land Records and Agri- 

 culture, North* Western Provinces, wrote that the pest, which 

 appeared in dry seasons, had destroyed as much as a fourth of the 

 sugarcane crOp in the neighbourhood of the Cawnpore Experimental 

 farm. A similar report relating to the country adjacent to Burdwan 

 and Sibpur was sent by the Director of Land Records and Agricul- 

 ture, Bengal. The letter forwarded was from the agricultural officer 

 of the above mentioned places. He wrote— 



" The sugarcane planting season extends from the beginning of February to 

 the end of May. If there be no rains in April or May, and if the cane fields are 

 riot frequently irrigated, which from the scarcity of water at this time is hardly 

 possible, the p?st makes its appearance. The pest first shows itself by the drying 

 of the middle stalk of the plant, and is hence called by the ryots the majera (a 

 Bengali term meaning relating to the middle) ; on pulling, the stalk now easily 

 comes out, and its lower end is found to have become a rotten mass. Very soon 

 the whole plant dies away, and from the root stock a number of smaller plants 

 make their, appearance, to be in their turn attacked by the worm. If the rains 

 hold off a long time, or if the fields are not thoroughly irrigated, three or four 

 generations of 'plants are in this way attacked and destroyed. At last, when the 



1 In a paper published by the Agri-Horticultural Society^ India, Volume IX, p. 355 (1S57). 



