No. 3.] Sugarcane. 165 



surface sculpturing under a microscope, the surface a little shining, 

 the egg very pale green in colour, but becoming slightly tinged 

 with yellow before the young larva emerges. The eggs are invari- 

 ably (except in the rare instance when a leaf has become reversed) 

 laid on the under surface alongside the midrib of the leaf, in the 

 natural longitudinal hollow of the leaf. They are generally to b e 

 found on the posterior half of the leaf, i.e., that adjoining the main 

 stem of the plant, and are placed in a long string or mass, generally 

 about half-an-inch in length, but sometimes extending to a full inch 

 or even more. They are laid very irregularly, though close together. 

 At either end there is usually a single egg, then two or three more 

 or less abreast till the end of the string of eggs is reached. Very 

 rarely are there four eggs abreast. The eggs nearly always touch 

 one another, but do not overlap in the way that one tile overlaps 

 another on a roof. In the more than fifty clsuters of eggs I collected 

 in an srea of a few square yards in a few minutes, the number of 

 eggs in a string or cluster ranged from three to thirty, but from 

 fifteen to twenty was the usual number. Each egg-mass is thickly 

 covered with the long pure white thread-like hairs which clothe 

 the anal segment of the mother-bug, so that the white egg-mass on 

 the green sugarcane leaves is extremely conspicuous. There is 

 no mistaking these eggs if examined at all carefully, though the 

 web egg-shelter of a small spider which is common in the cane-fields 

 superficially resembles the eggs of the bug. Not improbably these 

 spiders feed largely on the young bugs. The pale green eggs of 

 the bug can often be seen beneath their cottony covering. The 

 eggs are attached extremely slightly to the surface of the leaf ; the 

 least touch dislodges them. This perhaps is not an important 

 matter in the economy of the insect, as if the eggs should fall to 

 the ground they would most likely be uninjured, being quite hard ; 

 the actual fall would not hurt them, and the active young larvae 

 on emergence would quickly regain their food plant. I noted that 

 if a single egg-cluster was found on a plant there would be usually 

 several others, generally two or three, sometimes as many as six. 

 In four days after I first found the eggs the young larvae commenced 

 to emerge. They do not eat the empty egg shells as so many 

 lepidopterous insects do They are colourless (whitish), of grotesque 

 appearance, being furnished with a pair of long tail-like tufted 

 filaments from the posterior end of the body, which they can bring 

 close together into a single " tail " or separate widely apart. They 

 are very active and hop vigorously. Owing to my visit to Cawnpore 

 being of a few days duration only, I was unable to follow up the life 



