8 3 2 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[April i, 1882. 
the leaves of the coffee plant were good for food 
and to be desired, and we all know the fearful 
result. Oidium and 'phylloxera may have been in- 
troduced to Australia with the vines which were im- 
ported from all vine-growing portions of the earth : 
from the forests of the western world as well aB 
from the sunny plains of France, the slopes of the Swi?9 
mountains, and the banks of the Rhine and Moselle. 
But purely indigenous was the plague of locust- 
like grasshoppers which we fouud eo prevalent on the 
largest vineyard in Victoria, perhaps iu the world, 
that opened in the valley of the Yarra by an enter- 
prizing Swiss, Mr. de Castella, and named "St. 
Hubert" after his patron saint. The St. Hubicrt wines 
and the names of Castella and Eowan are now 
known all over the world, the Emperor of Germany's 
special prize at the Melbourne Exhibition having been 
awarded to them by the German Commissioner, who 
ranked the Australasian light wines with those of bis 
own country. Bui over the 250 acres of vines, which 
(with cellars, presses, &c.) had cost, we were told, 
i'80,000, the grasshoppers were devouring. The in- 
sects were so numerous that we could not walk through 
the vines without treading on them ; 200 turkeys 
which Mr. de Castella had just turned in were making 
but slight impression on the enemy, and we were act- 
ually told that the inseclivorous shrikes known locally 
as " magpies" were dying from the irritating effects 
of the serrated wings and legs of the grasshoppers 
they had swallowed. The visitation was reckoned 
a very serious one ; but probably creatures which we 
saw swarming in the fervent heat of January may 
have been killed off by the wintry frosts of July. In 
any case, it is not only coffee planters who have to 
contend with insect and fungoid plagues. In Victoria 
the heroic but we fear ineffective remedy is being 
tried of eradicating all the vines in the Geelong dis- 
trict, because phylloxera has there appeared. We 
have noticed the discovery mad6 by the cockchafer 
beetles of Ceylon that the rich rootlets of coffee are as 
food preferable for the nurture of their larva to the 
roots or stems of poor, innutritious grasses. But Pro- 
fessor MacCoy, the Professor of Natural Science in Mel- 
bourne University and Director of one of the best filled 
and most interesting Museums out of Europe^ has in 
his Prodromus of the Natural History of Victoria 
recorded a case still more singular. Noticing a plate 
of Agarista Glycine, the Vine Day Moth, he wrote :— 
This species received its specific name from Lewin ob- 
serving that in New South Wales the larvae fed on the 
leaves of the leguminose plant, the Glycine bimaculata. In' 
this colony, however, is is generally called the vine-moth, 
from one of the mo t extraordinary changes of habit ever 
recorded in any insect. In the early days of this colony, 
before the introduction of the vine, the larvae of this insect 
fed on the Gwriphatiwn luteoalbum, which is a very com- 
mon weed, but since the planting of vineyards the Agarista 
glycine has inert ased enormously ' 
totally abandoned 
ibers, and has 
iginal food to devour the leaves of the 
nrape vine, never now touching the former, but thriving and 
multiplying beyond measure on the foliage of so totally 
dissimilar a plant, that it tho perfect female Day-moth he 
guided bv ordinary instinct to choosetbat plant on which 
to del OSlt its eggs or 
the la 
■ ly beii 
ig sep; 
^ed 
rhich fooding, motion, and the 
senses are all stopped), it is not possible <o conceive or 
understand how the egg-laying Day-moth could have gained 
such kno'wledge of tun properties of the vine as would 
induce it to abandon the natural food (not of itself, but) 
of its larvae, and f o put its trust in a foreign plant of which 
one might suppose itcould know nothing;. 
There are two or three broods in the year, the first 
brood of larvce appearing about the end of October, or 
when the vines begin to come into leaf, and after a few 
weeks enter the pupa state, about the beginning of December, 
the moth coming out about the end of December, while 
the larva? figured, descended into the earth, formed their 
earthen cocoons beneath the surface at the end of March, 
and the perfect imago came out on the 18th of May. 
I cannot understand Le win's statement and figure of alight 
cocoon of thin silk attached to twigs of trees for this species, 
for in this colony it invariably forms a slight cocoon of 
earth below the surface of the ground. 
The injury done to the vines in the extensive vineyards of 
Victoria by the larvae of this species is enormous, and seems 
to be increasing. Their numbers are altogether too great 
to be dealt with by any other means but hand-picking, and 
there are -not hands enough in the country yet for that 
as the children by law must attend school. The acclimatis- 
ation Society acclimatized the Indian Minah in the hope that, 
besides destroying the grasshoppers and locusts (which they 
do admirably), they might diminish this pest also; but they 
have unfortunately developed a taste for eatnig the grapes, 
and do not seem to like the larvae of the Agarista. Before 
the new school law, children used to be employed thin- 
ning the numbers of the larvae in an unpleasant but 
effective manner, by cutting each one across with a pair 
of scissors as they walked along the rows of plants, in- 
stead of delaying to pick them off. Even this sharp and 
decisive proceeding is too tedious to keep down their 
numbers, and, to add to the difficulty, the fowls even 
will not ea them, nor any other creature as far as I 
know. The onlv suggestion I can make is to employ 
hand-pickers, at the time of the approach of the first brood 
of caterpillars, when the vines come first into leaf. Each 
one killed then prevents the formation of multitudes, as 
well as Sives strength to the plant by their present re- 
moval. 'I he next object of attention should be to kill all 
the moths rf the first brood found on the wing, the figure 
here given rendering the right one easy of recognition, 
and this for each one killed will destroy myriads of eggs 
which would form the second brood. 
The above extract proves that "there are more things 
in heaven and earth" (and in the insect world) "than 
are dreamt of in our philosophy" ; and that we are not 
alone in suffering from the attacks on our enterprize of 
enemies, minute and yet so formidable as almost to 
set man's industry and skill at defiance. But as we 
do not believe that fungi or insects will destroy the 
young vine industry of Australia, so neither do we 
believe it to be the settled design of a benevolent 
Providence that the leading and long established en- 
terprise of Ceylon should succumb to the attacks of 
HemHeia vastatrix and grubs. The pests have had 
their cycle, and we again look for "a good time coming." 
Before closing these discursive notes, we cannot help 
attracting the attention of travellers along the rail- 
way line to the very large flocks of the small stork 
(paddy-bird of the English and "MJcd" — from the note 
it utters when rising,— of the Sinhalese; now to be seen 
feeding on Darwin's most recent heroes, the earth- 
worms, in the newly-ploughed rice-fields. We have 
seldom, if evei, seen so many " kokas" together before. 
Then about five miles on the left, before reaching 
Pulgahawela, there is, just under a low hill, sur- 
mounted by a large pointed boulder, a glorious group 
of fully a dozen talipot palms in blossom We trust 
Mr. Skeen, or some other enterprizing photographer, 
will not fail to perpetuate this group in a series of plates. 
