10, 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[July 1, 1899. 
and Odies bipunctata. I have obtained no particulars 
regarding these beetles, and mention them purely in 
order to suggest further enquiry. 
9 Grrubs of Lepidiota and of Copris "-Ijave been 
mentioned above {p. I8i) as having been sent from 
a tea garden, but in addition I have before me now 
a third grub, viz., that of a Ijongicorn beetle 
(Reg. No. 103) which ha9 been reported as doing much 
injury to the tea. The Longicorn CCeuambycid) 
beeclea are mostly dangerous wood- borers. 
O 
A TREATISE ON TEA.* 
A scientific dissertation on what tea-planters 
vulgarly call tea-bugs does not promise to be of 
absorbing interest. For a moment a flutter of hope 
is raised when the savant opens with an allusion 
to his explorations in the not un-mapped district of 
Kaugra, and we congratulate ourselves he is about 
to invest it with some of the fascination that tem- 
porarily hangs over, say Klondylje. But from Kangra 
to Klondyke is a far cry, and the prospect; of ex- 
citing adventure is quickly dispelled when tlie rea.der 
dips into the leaves of Mr. Watt's volume on Tea 
Pests ajid Blights, vainly seeking the cheerful powers 
of description that enlivened Fortunes books about 
China and its tea districts, and discovering only 
a tome fall of peculiarly dry facts. Tlie book will 
with difficulty interest tea-planters, a body of men 
who, as all the world knows, invariably fall asleep 
over their Pioneer after dinner, and are not to be 
appealed to by any form of literature excepting 
tea broker's dis'oaraging reports and valuations on 
their samples, and, occasionally, perhaps a printed 
news letter from their own district that pokes fun 
at their daily life and habits. 
And yet, notwithstanding, the entire absence of 
light and sweetness in its pages, Mr. Watt has 
written a book tliat deserves much commendation 
and will repay intelligent study. Tea holds the 
fifth place of precedence in the roll of Indian 
exports, and any work that helps the industry to 
understand itself better is deserving of cordial re- 
cognition. The literature of tea, both ephemeral 
and in volume form is sadly flaccid stuff. Since the 
Indian Tea Gazette — a periodical which did a vast 
deal of good, and diffused an immense amount of 
vahiable practical information in its day — expired 
from lack of support from those it tried so hard 
to serve, the tea industry has not been adequately 
represented by any journal worthy of the name. As 
for Gold Medal Essays and fugitive works on tea 
planting, which our forefathers were guided by a 
quarter of a century ago, they have long and rightly 
been consigned to the limbo of the obsolete. 
If we have a fault to hint at in Mr. Watt's 
book it is that it is too scientific for our taste, 
and that he is a little apt to cavalierly pooh-pooh 
practice when he is laying down theory. This mere 
especially in the first portion of the volume, which is 
devoted to the treatment and cultivation of the tea 
plant, and interests us far more than the too technical 
second part, with its staggering array of scientific 
Latin names in blocktype. Why cannot surgeons and 
scientists drop Latin ? Fancy any sensible man calling 
ajanioar an Aspidiolus Ci/anophi/Ui when he can damn 
it off hand, sucointly and suitably as a "scale-bug" ? 
Conceive a tea planter whose one aim in life is to 
pull off a five maund per acre crop and get an eight 
anna average for it, seeking inspiration in three 
hundred dragging pages plentifully be sprinkled with 
scientific designations similar to the above. It is we 
presume for his exclusive benefit that the book is 
published by what he has recently apostrophised as '' a 
kind and powerful Government." It so we hear it is 
not "popular" enough for its purpose. There is too 
* The Pests a,nd Blir/hts of the Tea Plant, heing a 
rtfiort of investir/ations conducted^ in Assam, and to some 
dxt.itii.t also in Kanjira." By Georgo Watt, M.B., 
CM., F.Jj.S., C.I.E,, Reporter on licouomic Products 
to the tipyeniweiit pf lodia, 
much of the economic study in it : it is too prolix 
to be perspicuous ; and as a practical vade mecum it 
wants more one-syllable words. 
On the other hand we willingly admit that Mr. Watt 
has written a learned and exhaustive treatise on Tea 
I-'ests and Blights, as he who runs may read. Those 
who suffer from these pests will do well to wrap a 
wet to tcwel round their heads (their own hsads), and 
refer to Dr. Watt for information and advice. They 
shall lesrn in his book all about mosquito, green flv, 
red-spider, aph s (a single individual of which can, if 
unchecked, be ihe ancestor — Mr. Watt informs as — 
of 10,000,000,00 1,000,000 of its own specias in three 
month's time, the unprincipled monster !) and 6e»«ral 
other protoplastic orgauisms some of which might come, 
perhaps, as not an unmixed curse to planters behind- 
haud in their outturn, wlio, peradventure would on 
occasions welcome their occurrence with llie enthusi- 
asm th;y accord to the three benevolent hailstones, 
which timely constitute a ttorm aud an excuse for 
ridncing estimates by twenty thousand pounds. Certca 
there are som e pests and blights desciibed by Mr. 
Watt in very minute detail whose life history, however 
much it euthrald the pedant, can have but nominal 
interestfor the planter, notwithstanding the portentous 
hints of possible calamity that Mr. Watt lets drop 
anent some of them in language solemn enough for 
the bubonic plague. 
Take the caution to Kangra for instance. It is a 
district which " may be said two have two pests of any 
consequence. Neither should be viewed lightly, since 
it is possibly an accident, more than anything else, that 
they have not yet assumed gigantic proportions." 
These two pests are a scale-bug and a basket-worm, 
and we venture to assert that during the last forty 
years they have not lessened the Kangra aggregate 
tea crop of say, 60,000,000 by six thousand, we had 
almost witten six hundred, pounds of tea. Forty years 
of consecutive ''accident" should set Kangra planters 
fairly at their ease in regard to Aspidiouts Tkeoe and 
Ainatissa Consorta. 
Apropos of Kangra t3a pests wg may mention an in- 
cident about the red spider and its occurrence in the 
Valley which may be new to Mr. Watt. Referring to 
the necessity of studying the habits of this pest more 
closely, he writes, "Experiments should be performed 
in every district. Why should we, for example, be 
unable to say where the red spider hibernates? " 
Taking this as a test it may be observed that about 
fourteen years ago the red spider was introduced into 
Kangra Valley by a planter who imported some high 
(If tea seed from Assam. A few months after the 
seed arrived a ten acre plot of tea in his garden 
developed red spider in its acntest form, and absolutely 
stopped flushing in mid-season. That planter's feelings 
were quite too harrowing to describe. He believed he 
had not only ruined himself ; but his innocent neigh- 
hours by introducing the veritable tea plague into the 
district. He saw himself handed down to the after 
ages as the villain who killed the Kangra tea industry. 
His courage failed him to confess his crime. He 
kept mum. Never a word said he. He lived in guilty 
but silent dread, hypocritically pretending to enjoy 
his pegs, awhile he hugged his horrible secret in hia 
breast. The winter came. The red spider hibernated. 
Where ? Presumably on the Better Land — the land 
from which there is no return, for it certainly never 
appeared again in his garden. To this hour no one 
but that planter knows that fourteen years ago ten 
acres of tea were for a single season red spider 
stricken in Kangra Valley, and that happily the peat 
failed to resurrect the following spring. Its explora- 
tion of Kangra involved it in the fate that awaita 
those who intend to explore Klondyke, And it is in 
the light of this illustration that we think Mr. Watt 
takes some of his pests and blights a little too seriously 
Ignorance and idlenesss are far more dangerous foes 
to successful tea planting and the shareholders of tea 
companies than all the plant microbes Mr. Watt warns 
us against. With ignorance Mr. Watt seeks te battle 
in his first nine chapters, in which he discusses the 
treatment and cultivation of the tea bush. Hia 
very pertinent remarks on the selection and imprcve- 
ment of tea seed may be cordially oommended tQ 
