96 
been inaccurate. As Fabricius’s work was published in 1793, further evi- 
dence is thus afforded that the insect is indigenous to the western hemi- 
sphere. This insect still does similar damage in the vicinity of the 
original source of our information, as is indicated by two articles by 
Miss Ormerod in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Lon- 
don, 1879, XXXIII-XXXVI and XXXVI-XL, and by the reports of Mr. Im- 
Thurm, curator of the British Guiana Museum at Georgetown, pub- 
lished some time previously, but which we have not seen. 
In an added note to his Gardener’s Chronicle article Westwood states 
that according to information given him by “an intelligent Jamaica 
cane-grower” the borer was very destructive in Jamaica some 15 years 
previously [1842], but that its ravages had been greatly checked by 
allowing the refuse to accumulate on the ground and then firing the 
whole plantation, the old roots subsequently throwing up more vigorous 
shoots. 
Mr. H. Ling Roth has studied what he believes to be the same species 
in Queensland (Parasites of the Sugar-cane, reprinted from the Sugar 
Cane, March and April, 1885. London, 1885)... And in the same year 
M. A. Delteil (La Canne a sucre, Paris, 1885) treats of the Mauritius 
borer and considers it to have been. imported from Java, whereas the 
1856 commission had considered that it was derived from Ceylon. In 
1890 Dr. W. Kruger published in the Berichte der Versuchsstation ftir 
Zuckerrohr in West Java, Heft I, Dresden, 1890, an account of the 
Javan sugar-cane borers, and figures and describes a species determined 
as Diatrea striatalis Snell., which almost precisely resembles our species, 
and which he says occurs not only in Java, bat also in Borneo, Sumatra, 
and Singapore. In this same report another similar borer is described 
by Snellen as Chilo infuscatellus. 
The West Indian cane borer made its appearance in the sugar-cane 
plantations of Louisiana at an early date. J. B. Avequin, writing in the 
Journal de Pharmacie for 1857 (vol. XXXII, pp. 335-337), upon the ene- 
mies of the sugar-cane in the Antilles and Louisiana, stated that during 
the two or three preceding years this insect had spread over some of the 
eane fields of Louisiana, but without having caused up to that time 
any great damage. He thought that the early frosts towards the end 
of October or November destroyed great numbers. It appears to have 
been first noticed in the parish of St. John Baptist in the year 1855. 
Since this time the insect must have been constantly present in the 
Louisiana cane fields, and has probably been reintroduced from time to 
time with fresh shipments of seed cane from the West Indies. In the 
fall of 1878 a few specimens were sent to Dr. Riley by a correspondent 
in Assumption Parish, Louisiana, and in the spring of 1879 Mr. E. A. 
Schwarz sent in a bit of cane containing larve from the Bahamas. In 
the spring of 1881, I was sent to Louisiana by Professor Comstock, 
then entomologist of the Department of Agriculture, to study the sugar- 
cane beetle (Ligyrus rugiceps), and had the opportunity of studying this 
