General Meeting, Feb. 1st, 1854. xcv. 



which he published, and was very much astonished to find that 

 the remedy he set forth was the application of the Red 

 Ant in the manner I had suggested to Captain Wilkinson 

 some months previous.* 



* Captain Wilkinson kindly afforded his testimony to this assertion by 

 publishing the following letter in a local Journal at the time so much 

 discussion was about. 



" To the Editors of the Colombo Observer. 



New -market Estate, Pusilawa, January 29th, 1854. 

 Sir, — With reference to a letter concerning " the Bug" which lately 

 appeared in your paper, I should feel obliged by your giving publicity 

 to the fact, that as far back as May or June last, Doctor Lamprey wrote 

 to me offering to send some nests of Red Ants to my Estate, at the same 

 time expressing his firm conviction that he had made a discovery by 

 which he could effectually destroy the Bug upon Coffee Estates. 



I have, &c, 



N. A. Wilkinson, 



Late Capt. 15th RegtP 



Since this paper was read before the Society, a letter has appeared in 

 the Ceylon Times of the 3d February, 1854, from Mr. Simon Keir; 

 ' stating that so far back as 1851, the Red Ant was used to remove the 

 Bug from a Coffee Estate, so that the priority of discovery contended for 

 clearly belongs to another party. 



"In January 1851, I observed the Bug disappearing very rapidly from 

 an Estate under my charge on the Hunasgiria range, which had been 

 overrun with it. On examining the bushes we discovered at once that 

 the Bug was being devoured by a large Red Ant, which cleared the 

 whole away in a very short time. I naturally thought that a cure for 

 the Bug had at last been discovered, and took great pains in removing 

 some of their nests to another Estate in the same district, a considerable 

 portion of which was also covered with Bug; this Estate is about 1,000 

 feet higher than the one on which I first found the Red Ants, with a 

 climate of course much damper and colder, — which no doubt accounts 

 for my inability to see anything of the Ants but their nests the second 

 or third day after removal to the higher Estate. But most planters of 

 experience, I think, will admit, that if these Ants could be regularly 

 established on our Coffee Estates, it would be a much greater calamity 

 than the Bug itself. 



vol. ii. n 



