76 REPORT ON THE PADI-BORER. 
in width, on the leaves of the padi plant. The eggs after a 
few days become greyish, from the formation of the young 
caterpillars inside them. In the case of one female that I 
reared, eleven such masses were deposited in one night, and 
seven the next. One mass that I counted under the miscros- 
cope, contained 39 eggs, so that it would be safe to say, that 
one female will lay as many as 600 eggs. 
As there was not much choice possible in this case, nothing 
could be gleaned as to the part of the plant which would be 
selected, in a state of nature, by the female to deposit her 
eggs on, except that no eggs are deposited on the stem of the 
plant. Judging from the position of the young caterpillars, 
the part selected is at the junction of a young leaf with the 
stalk. 
From this point, as soon as the eggs are hatched, the 
young caterpillars eat their way into the tender shoot or into 
the midrib of the leaf in the case of the first brood, as will be 
mentioned further on. On exhausting the supply of food in 
the growing shoot, they bore out and re-enter the stalk lower 
down. 
The caterpillar makes a nearly circular hole where it 
enters a stalk, which it closes up from the inside, with fecal 
pellets and some fine white silk, and sometimes with the latter 
substance alone. When a caterpillar has eaten all the inner 
lining of one joint, or as much of it as it fancies, it either bores 
out again, and enters another joint, usually lower down the 
stalk, or it bores through the substance of the joint itself. 
This latter method of seeking for a fresh supply of food I have 
seen adopted on several occasions, both in the straws picked 
in the field and also in those I have kept for purposes of obser- 
vation. Sometimes it is the bottom of a joint, and sometimes 
the top which is thus perforated. 
The stalks are usually more eaten near the joints than 
elsewhere, and often the film remaining is so thin, that the 
stalk breaks short off. When the caterpillar is short of food, 
it will feed on the inner lining of the leafstalks. This has hap- 
pened in my breeding experiments, and I have also noticed it 
in the fields. 
