2o6 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [September i, 1890. 
bush) died gradually down to the parent stem. I 
have measured some of these dead shoots occasionally 
and have found them in some cases to be over 18" 
^°“'^The shoots that I have found to so die down 
have alwavs been of this year’s growth viz, those 
shooting out from just below last cold-weather pruning. 
“ Now, as blighted patches here have been found 
to have a large number of the young of the Bug 
(which by the bye are in appearance like red ants, 
with two feelers apiece, and are wingless) in all stages 
of development (from the size of a pin’s point 
to almost a full-grown bug) on nearly every 
bush, and as these young live right away in- 
side the bushes and feed on only the ‘minute shoots 
at the leaf-axils,’ the theory of pruning is to give the 
bush pruned, a severe check and so stop for a time 
the rising of sap (and. of course, the production of 
the ‘minute shoots at the leaf-axils’) in the hopes this 
brief period of the bushes’ dormnncy will be sufiBci- 
ent to kill the young bugs of starvation. Whether 
we have succeeded or not in destroying 6tny young 
ones by starvation it would be difficult to say, but 
that pruning is doing good is quite certain. Three 
days ago I got 25 maunds of leaf off the piece of 
tea that was pruned (5 acres in June last) in July; 
previous to pruning, this bit of tea was cowyhct^y 
shu*- up’ for ahout 2J months. 
‘ Of course we know it is o ly right to cultivate 
and keep extra clean any tea that may be hanging 
fire ’ or doing at all badly. I reversed the order of 
things with a bit of about 5 acres of very badly 
blighted tea: I allowed it to go into ‘howling jungle,’ 
the bushes were out of sight for over a month ; strange 
to say when I hoed and cleaned it up after a fortnight, 
I found the bushes quite recovered and with a very 
decent flush on them. The block of tea of which these 
5 acresare a p’^t presents a peculiar spectacle with its 
small piece of bright green healthy tea surrounded by 
dismnl-loobirp acres and acres. 
“Some weeks ago I tried sprinkling kerosme and 
water (i of k. to | of w.) over a piece (about 2 acres) of 
tea: on two occasions the day the mixture was sqniited 
I found a young dead mosquito, evidently killed by the 
oil having reached them. I will with pleasure report 
results of all experiments to you. c i. 
I forcTot whether I liave Brtoutioned to you the tact 
of my having found mosquito eggs on the lower and 
seed-bearing branches more frequently than I have 
come Across them on any other parts of the bush : a«- 
t/jc leaves have I found covered with eggs 
and never have I seen an egg on a ymny shoot. I have 
more than once found eggs on the tea seed itself. To give 
you some idea ofthenumber of eggs there are knock- 
inrr about I’ll just mention :— I ripped off from a bush 
near the bungalow all the leaves with eggs on them : 
on counting the leaves I found I bad 1,741. Some of 
these were smeared on both sides. This particular bush 
was about an average one, and was not picked out by 
me, because I thought it had a larger proportion of egg- 
leaves than its neighbours. ^ T U 
“ Young mosquitoes are very plentiful too ; I have 
picked off more than 70 from one bush, 
“ On one occasion I pulled a seed-bearing branch off 
a bush and counted 33 leaves on it; every leaf was 
smeared onhoth sides with eggs, and besides this the 
main branch itself and the smaller cues too had any 
quantity of eggs sticking to them. This will show you 
mosquitoes are not very particular where they lay their 
eggs. This is quite in opposition to what others say 
about mosquitoes depositing their eggs in the young 
shoots between pekoe and souchong leaf. 
Then follow descriptions of three homopterous 
insects found on the mango. 
We quote what is said of a Cotton Post: — 
Ir. F-hruary last Mr. E. E. Green, of Punduloya, 
Ceylon, sent me a small Lygaeid which, he spates, in- 
festh the ripe pod of the cotton, discoloring and caking 
the cotton. I find it is the Oxycarenus luyvhris, described 
“ome thirty years ago by Motsolnilsky. Hab. Ceylon. 
A coccid is noticed, tbo Coccus ceriferus of Anderson, 
found on tbo Mango, Arjuu, Pipal and other trees, and 
now on tea. 
Signoret,*' in bis paper on the Coccidie, merely quotes 
the imperfect description of Anderson, and gives no 
details. Under these circumstances I have sent 
examples to Mr. W. Maskell for description, as I have 
not leisure to take the work up myself. I do not think 
that there is any danger of this insect doing much 
damage to tea. If it does become troublesome, the 
application of kerosiue emulsion by spraying to the 
leaves containing the larva will quickly destroy them 
and prevent their spreading. The waxy portion of the 
adult female may possibly be used as an article of trade 
like the insect-wax of the pela in China, but of the uses 
of the Indian wax we know nothing yet. 
A butterfly destructive to fruit is described aa 
Virachola isocrates, Fabricius, a butterfly of the family 
Lyccenida, of the suborder Bhopaloeera, of the order 
Lepidoptera. It is found almost throughout the plains 
of India (except the desert tracts), and in Ceylon, but 
not in Assam or Burma. 
Every fruit that is attacked by the larva dies before 
it is full-grown and has ripened, as the ber.rt of the 
fruit is entirely destroyed by the iosect. Wrre this 
pest to increase largelj' in numbers, it would certainly 
do a vast amount of damage to fruit, as is now the case 
with the Mango beetle. 
The most effective remedy against this pest, if 
practicable, would be to catch the female butterflies 
and to destroy them before they have laid their eggs. 
When once an egg is laid on a fruit, that fruit is 
almost certainly doomed. As a further prevention 
against attack for the coming year, if all the fruit 
with holes in them were gathered and destroyed 
(burnt or buried), there would be but few 1 iitterflies 
left to lay eggs and to carry on the species during the 
followine season. 
In Miscellaneous Notes by E. C. Cotes, there 
is much that is interesting, but we can find room 
only for a tew extracts : — 
From Messrs. Octavius Steel & Co. were received, 
11th October 1889, some specimens of a caterpillar 
covered with urticatiug hairs. The specimen-, though 
too much decayed for precise determination, were 
obviousiy the larvae of a moth belonging to the group 
Bombyces. 
The following is an extract from the letter of the 
Manager of the tea estate in South Sylhet where the 
insects were found : — 
“ By today’s post I send you in a bottle a number of 
caterpillar-looking insects that have been giving me a 
lot of trouble this year, not destroying the bushes but 
laming the coolies. I have sixty coolies incapacitated 
from work owing to this. The caterpillars, or what- 
ever they are, lie under the edge of the bush and the 
coolie treads on them when pmcking, his foot begins 
to pain, and if not on the hard sole a blister rises, 
and until this forms into a wound and suppurates 
he suffers agony and can’t walk at all.” 
Information has been received tlirongh Mr. Lionel 
de Niceville of injury done during tbe past year to 
tea in Sikkim by Eelopeltis f/ierrora (Mosquito blight) 
and Tetranychns hioculatus (Bed spider). 
The Bed spider atta< ks the tea in spring and early 
summer, while the Mosquito blight is found during 
August and September and confines its ravages chiefly 
to elevations below 2 000, feet. On one tea estate 
alone the lo.«s caused by the Mosquito blight in the 
past year was estimated at .300 maunds of tea, 
valued at B20,000, that done by the Bed spider being 
even greater. It is said that the Mosquito blight 
has only appeared of late years in Sikkim, with the 
cessation of the practice of annually burning the 
jungle. 
Preparations are being made in one garden, on a 
considerable scale, for sprinkling bushes attacked 
by the Bed spider with Flour of sulphur, with a 
view to the destruction of the pest. Sprinkling with 
fl lur of sulphur has been found useful in Florida 
for destroying ihe Rust mite Typhloromus oleivoru.-i, 
which attacks orange trees. This treatment would 
therefore be promising for use against Red spider. 
* Signoret, 1. c. (5s.). ii, 1872, p. 40, t. 7, f. 3 ; Atkin- 
son, in Jl. As Soc. Calc., iv‘ (2), 1886, p.279. 
