1 82 
A VISIT TO RUBBER PLANTATIONS 
over the trees and tarring all cuts and the sockets left by the dropping 
off of the temporary branches. This, however, would be very expensive 
and hardly practical. I was able to secure a number of specimens of 
the larvce, and the Bureau of Entomology at Washington decided that 
they belonged to one of the large moths, family Cossida. Their report 
was that they knew little about the work of this moth, but that the best 
way to kill the borer was to inject a few drops of carbon bisulphide into 
the burrow with an oil can, closing the orifice with a little wax. The 
fumes of the solvent would then penetrate the lower part of the burrow 
and kill the grub. Professor John Barlow, of Kingston, Rhode Island, 
however, reported that instead of a moth it was probably a beetle. He 
suggested the same treatment for the destruction of the grub as the 
Bureau of Entomology at Washington. In this connection, it may be 
well to recall that sometime before this an anonymous writer reported 
that a beetle, the Aconsymus longimanus, was troublesome in Nica- 
ragua just in this way — that is, laying eggs in wounds in bark of the 
Castilloa, which developed into borers and greatly injured the trees. 
The fruiter on which we finally embarked was a Norwegian of 
about seven hundred tons, and carried ten thousand bunches of bananas. 
As we were the only three passengers, we took possession of the bridge, 
and also of the captain’s quarters, and lived high in everything except 
food. We went out in the face of a norther, and ran into one after another 
during the whole passage. The boat had no refrigerating apparatus, 
and to save the fruit both the fore and after hatches were kept wide 
open, and it was a constant matter of wonderment to me that some of the 
big green seas didn’t topple over our bow and swamp us, but they 
didn’t, and we sailed on by Cape Gracias a Dios, through squall after 
squall, the temperature all the time in the eighties, and finally, missing 
the delta of the Mississippi by a wide margin, ran almost to Mobile 
before we got our bearings. We finally got right, however, and went 
up the Mississippi and landed in New Orleans just in time to enjoy 
the fireworks with which they usher in Christmas Day. 
