436 INSECTS. [Chap. XII. 
same considerations which restrained those of the Nile 
under the successors of Cambyses. 
The Co ffee-Bug. — Allusion has been made in a previous 
passage to the coccus known in Ceylon as the " Coffee- 
Bug (Lecanium Caffece, Wlk.), which of late years has 
made such destructive ravages in the plantations in the 
Mountain Zone. 1 The first thing that attracts attention 
on looking at a coffee tree infested by it, is the number 
of brownish wart-like bodies that stud the young shoots 
and occasionally the margins on the underside of the 
leaves. 2 Each of these warts or scales is a transformed 
female, containing a large number of eggs which are 
hatched within it. 
When the young ones come out from their nest, they 
run about over the plant like diminutive wood-lice, 
and at this period there is no apparent distinction be- 
tween male and female. Shortly after being hatched 
the males seek the underside of the leaves, while the 
females prefer the young shoots as a place of abode. If 
the under surface of a leaf be examined, it will be found 
to be studded, particularly on its basil half, with minute 
yellowish-white specks of an oblong form. 3 These are 
the larvae of the males undergoing transformation into 
pupae, beneath their own skins ; some of these specks 
are always in a more advanced state than the others, 
the full-grown ones being whitish and scarcely a line 
1 The following notice of the coffee districts, until it had estab- 
" coffee-bug," and of the singularly lished itself more or less perma- 
destructive effects produced by it nently in all the estates in full 
on the plants, has been prepared cultivation throughout the island, 
chiefly from a memoir presented to 2 See the annexed drawing, Fig. 1. 
the Ceylon Government by the 3 Pigs. 2, and 3 and 5 in the 
late Dr. Gardner, in which he engraving, where these and all the 
traces the history of the insect other figures are considerably en- 
from its first appearance in the larged. 
