DISEASES AND PESTS 91 



are common enough in apparently healthy trees to be 

 suspected of doing damage both directly and indirectly, 

 in greater measure, as they furnish places for infection 

 by fungi, or for the laying of the eggs of the palm 

 weevil. 



Leaf- eating Insects (Bronthispa). — Of the small 

 leaf-eating beetles of the family Hispidae several have 

 been reported as serious local pests of the coco-nut. 

 Among these, Froggatt describes Bronthispa froggatti 

 as certainly the worst pest the planters of the Solomon 

 Islands have to fight in their young plantations. This 

 was first reported in 1903 from New Britain, where it 

 was also a serious pest, and fully 50,000 plants were 

 said to be already ravaged by it. Both the adult and 

 the larva feed upon coco-nut leaves. 



The beetle measures up to half an inch in length from the 

 tip of the antennae, which stand out in front, to the tip of the 

 body ; but they are often much smaller and variable in size, 

 and are very slender, not more than one-tenth of an inch across 

 the broadest part of the back. 



The general colour is shining black, with the thorax and 

 fore pair of legs dull yellow, and the second pair marked with 

 yellow. The head is small, the eyes project on the sides, the 

 front is produced into a lance-shaped point standing out be- 

 tween the basal joints of the stout antennae. These antennae 

 consist of eleven small segments, the basal ones irregularly 

 rounded, the apical ones cylindrical and fitting close into each 

 other. The thorax is almost square, slightly hollowed out on 

 the sides, and curved round in front behind the eyes. The 

 long slender body is covered with stout black wing-covers 

 deeply and finely marked with parallel furrows, which are 

 finely and deeply punctured, so that the whole surface is finely 

 but regularly pitted. The tips of the wing-covers are depressed 

 and rounded. 



The beetles crawl into the folds of the opening fronds as 

 they are expanding, and under their shelter lay their small 

 horn-coloured eggs, from which the curious flattened larvae 

 hatch and feed upon the surface of the leaf. Both the beetles 

 and larvae damage the leaves, and the whole life-history of the 

 pest can be studied in a single frond. The larva, when full 

 grown, measures just two-fifths of an inch in length ; it is 

 slender, cylindrical, and somewhat flattened, with the segments 



