THE ENEMIES OF COFFRE :—WHITE GRUB, 225. 
pointing to the scraped coffee root. ‘‘ Ah!’ was our: 
response, ‘‘ your illustration would be accepted by Mr. 
Dixon as a strong support to his theory, which is that 
the real enemy of the planters is a fungus which destroys 
the feeding rootlets, and also barks the woody roots, 
while the grub comes as the planters’ friend to feed on 
the fungus.” I told the tale of Mr. Dixon’s theory as 
it was told tome, but (holding myself open to convic- 
tion) with no more inclination fully to accept it than 
. the opposite theory that grub is responsible not cnly for 
the destruction of the feeding rootlets, but for the loss 
‘of the leaves, on the cellular tissues (the very life-blood 
of the coffee-plant) of which hemileia vastatrix feeds. 
Does Mr. Dixon mean to affirm, that he has found a 
destructive fungus on every uprooted tree which his 
planter-friends supposed to have suffered simply from 
grubs? and does he deny that the progeny of the cock- 
chafer feeds on healthy living tissues? Going on my 
own experience of the termites which build their nests 
in cinnamon bushes in Colombo without ever injuring - 
the living branches (devouring only dead or dying 
matter), I could not understand the stress laid by Indian 
tea-planters on the removal of all dead timber from their 
land, lest the ‘‘ white-ants” migrate from the dead. 
timber trees to feed on the living tea-bushes. What 
my experience led me to doubt, 1 was compelled to 
believe on the universal testimony of the tea-planters, 
who affirm that white-ants wt// attack and destroy per- - 
fectly healthy living tea-plants. There is also the case 
of the phylloxera and the vine, and the worse one of 
the grasshoppers in America, who, after eating the plants 
of a tobacco field, arrange themselves on the fences and 
squirt tobacco juice at the unfortunate farmer! Ido 
not doubt the prevalence of and the mischief occasioned 
by subterranean fungi, but surely the growth of such 
vegetation is not copious enough to supply food to the 
millions of grubs which are found in the soil round 
‘*shuck”’ coffee trees? My inclination, as at present in- 
formed, is to believe, that leaf disease takes priority of 
grub both in time and power for mischief. There were 
giubs before the era of leaf disease, no doubt, as there 
were generals before Agamemnon. But the creatures 
were few and far between and were mischievous only on 
isolated spots. They did not in the days of old sweep . 
over whole valleys as they have done from the mouth 
of the Nanuoya in Dimbula to the topmost cultivation 
in this district. If weare to say that the one pest pre- 
disposes to the others, then I think we are rather 
justified in saying that the debilitating influence of leaf 
disease (added to abnormal seasons) has encouraged 
attacks of grubs and root fungi, than in stating the 
