No. 3.] Indigo. \ 4. 



have been made : — "One of the most determined and persevering 

 enemies the planter has to fight is the little green caterpillar; it 

 will turn up suddenly in a year when the crop is excellent, and 

 sweep off sheets of strong young indigo, not leaving a trace behind 

 of the once green crop. The caterpillar appears about March, 

 when it will steadily eat its way through the four or seven-leaf 

 indigo; and then its movements are shrouded in mystery, but the 

 supposition is it changes from a stout bloated caterpillar into a 

 chrysalis, which is thought to be buried in the ground ; but how 

 long it remains in that state is not known. It then turns into a 

 moth and lays its eggs on the indigo leaves, presumably at night, 

 they taking about eight days to hatch." A bad "caterpillar year " 

 is thus described ; — '' After there has been a cold weather rain 

 some time before the sowings, and the indigo has already arrived a 

 four leaves, a few days of east wind is sufficient to produce cater- 

 pillars. They will then creep, craw), and eat until a west wind 

 suddenly springs up- and kills them and the half-dead thread-like 

 stalks of the indigo remaining. If the planter is lucky enough to 

 have moisture he resows his lands when the crop is dead, but with 

 an east wind again the caterpillars appear and destroy the new 

 crop ; the only chance the indigo has of being saved is their eating 

 the whole of the leaves up, leaving the lines where the indigo was — 

 a faint thin streak of wire-like stumps ; the caterpillars will then 

 disappear, and if there are light west winds half the day and east 

 winds the other half the crop will revive, and will soon spring into 

 life again ; warmth and moisture helping it to grow out of all danger 

 of the caterpillars doing it any further harm. But the planter is 

 generally left with a badly crippled crop, it having been badly 

 thinned out. The pests are always worse on "seeted" lands 

 ( " seet " is the refuse of the indigo from the vats, which is spread 

 or ploughed into the land as manure), and as a rule they first 

 appear on these lands. Towards the latter end of the " khoonti 

 mehai " (manufactre of indigo dye from the second cutting of the 

 plant), milliards of caterpillars pass through the steeping vats with 

 the indigo, and are thrown out with the seet in which they mix (a 

 large number also falling with the indigo leav >s to the ground on 

 fields and mixing with the soil). These eggs remain in the seet 

 throughout the cold months, and mix with the soil when the lands 

 are seeted, and a cold weather rain, in conjunction with the mild 

 east winds in March, is sufficient to stir them up and hatch them. 

 The conclusion one must come to is that the grub is always more or 

 less present in the indigo, and it appears under certain favourable 



