436 



INSECTS. 



[Chap. XII. 



same considerations which restrained those of the Nile 

 under the successors of Cambyses. 



The Coffee-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 Figs. 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. 



