4-OI 



About 30 per cent, was found to have germinated in the War- 

 dian cases from Ceylon and directly planted out in the nurseries. 

 Till 2 days ago they did splendidly and reached the height of a foot. 

 Coming on inspection to the nurseries this morning I found several 

 young plants had turned yellow and upon taking them out I found 

 that the roots just at the place where the plant was touching the 

 surface soil were rotten. 



I think it must be a disease which I used to have sometimes in the 

 nurseries for tobacco and I shall try to kill the disease by watering 

 the beds with Bouille" Bordelaise. 



The reason cannot be that the nurseries were not sufficiently 

 drained. The ground was hoed a long time ago and the nurseries are 

 a foot and a half high. The soil is very porous and consists of 50 

 per cent, at least of sand. I planted seeds in bamboos and small 

 gunny- bags and everywhere I got this disease". 



The soil of these nurseries must be thoroughly infected with this 

 pestilential fungus, and in cases like this it should be disinfected as 

 far as possible with Copper Sulphate and Lime, and allowed to 

 fallow, nothing being planted on it. Some years ago a very nice 

 looking grassy plot in the Botanic Gardens was dug for beds, and 

 cuttings of Ficus elastica and other plants put in, and also a plant of 

 Melocanna bambusoides an Indian bamboo, all of which died. The 

 cuttings were found to have a pink nectria-like fungus on the cut 

 ends, the cambium layer died, and the plants never survived. Here 

 again the ground was infected by a fungus and could not be utilized 

 at all. 



Has any one met with the fungus referred to by our correspon- 

 dent ? I know of nothing exactly like it. 



H. N. R. 



ATTACUS ATLAS AND RUBBER. 



There is no more voracious and destructive Caterpillar than that 

 of the Atlas moth Attacus Atlas. Its ordinary food is the leaves of 

 the Sweet-sop and Sour-sop, Anona reticulata and A. muricata, but 

 it will also eat all manner of other leaves and is the only caterpillar 

 I have seen attacking the astringent Gambir leaves. It eats as might 

 be expected from its large size a great deal of a tree, and reduces 

 its foliage to rags in a very short time. Dr. LlM Boon Keng in- 

 forms me that he found many of these caterpillars on his Sour-sop 

 trees at Yo Chu Keng, where he has his rubber estate, and fearing 

 that they might attack the Para rubber collected a number to experi- 

 ment with. He says that on giving these animals rubber leaves to 

 eat, they attacked them and ate for a few minutes then stopped and 

 remained quite motionless till the evening when they fell from the 

 twigs dead. The Hevea leaves had evidently a poisonous effect 

 on these caterpillars. This is very satisfactory as we can have 

 nothing to fear from this pest, which might if it could digest the 

 leaves have proved a serious pest. 



H. N. R. 



