RATS INJURING SUGAR-CANE. AT 
It is usually not particularly injurious as it customarily feeds on the dead and drying 
tissues of the leaf-sheaths of sugar cane; but when very numerous and on particularly 
soft varieties of cane the caterpillars do considerable eating of the epidermis, and also 
eat into the buds and destroy them, occasioning a good deal of loss where the cane is 
desired for cuttings to plant. 
The grasshoppers Xiphidium varipenne Swezey and Oxya velox Fab. 
feed to some extent on the leaves of cane. The former species is also 
predatory in habit, attacking the young leafhoppers and the larvee 
of the sugar-cane leaf-roller. 
Two species of beetles which occasionally invade the cane fields 
from their common food plants and attack the leaves of the sugar 
cane are Fuller’s rose beetle, Aramigus fullert Horn,* and the Japanese 
beetle, Adoretus tenuimaculatus Waterh.° 
RATS INJURING GROWING SUGAR CANE IN HAWAII. 
The so-called roof-rat (Mus alecandrinus) in former years was 
very common in the cane fields of Hawati and did considerable 
damage by eating the stalks. This is also the cane-field rat of the 
island of Jamaica. The species in Hawaii lives now for the most part 
in trees and the upper stories of dwellings, since it has been driven 
to a great degree from the cane fields by the introduced mongoose. 
The introduction of the mongoose was a benefit as regards its destruc- 
tion to the rats in the cane fields, but the animal is an undesirable 
acquisition to the fauna of the islands for the reason that in recent 
years it has included in its dietary the eggs and young of ground- 
nesting birds and domestic fowls. The destruction of the ground- 
nesting birds is most regrettable. 
a@Van Dine, D. L.—Hawaii Exp. Sta., Press Bul. 14, p. 5, October, 1905. 
6 KoEBELE, ALBERT.—Hawaiian Planters’ Monthly, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 260-264, 
June, 1898. 
