BEES AND WASPS IN THE PUNJAB. 231 
contend with many enemies, the most troublesome being the 
“tomato-worm,”* a smooth brown caterpillar, not unlike those 
on English cabbages, which, burying themselves in the fruit, 
eat away all the inside, leaving nothing but the skin. Another 
“ tomato worm ” is the long green larva of the “ tomato moth.” 
The perfect insect (a sphinx) is large and handsome, with a 
proboscis three times the length of the entire insect. The 
general colour is shades of brown and grey, the body being 
marked with transverse pink or yellow bands. It is curious 
why the tint of these markings should so vary, it may be the 
difference in sex, or a second variety of the female as occurs 
in the orange dog butterfly. The “cut-worm ” is a most remark- 
able pest, attacking all young vegetables throughout the state. 
It also is a caterpillar, but unlike the generality, it buries in 
the ground, only eating at night, and even then merely seeming 
to bite through the stalks of young plants just where they leave 
the earth. Sometimes in the morning it is quite a distressing 
thing to see line after line of promising young shoots cut through 
and withering on the ground. 
This is not the place to enlarge upon the rattle-snakes, 
cobras, and other familiar reptiles ; indeed, I may have already 
given an unfair impression of a country which is more than 
fascinating, and a life of which we certainly would never have 
tired. 
W. M. E. F. 
BEES AND WASPS IN THE PUNJAB. 
'CJ'WWg R. LAMBERT BARLOW, to whom I was indebted for 
b! notes on the “ Winter Flight of Cranes in the 
tf.iiW-R i Punjab,”! has since furnished me with some interest- 
ing facts about bees and wasps in that country. 
In the Punjab and in Cashmere adjoining, there are several 
species of native bees, but the farmers of the country, who are 
the chief bee-keepers, have domesticated only one species which 
I gather does not differ in any essential particulars from our own 
ordinary honey bee {Apis mellifica). The value of this bee has 
been recognised in the Punjab from time immemorial, where it is 
known under the native name of “ shahud-ki-mukhi,” or honey 
fly. By some it is called “ madhu mukhi,” the word “ shahud ” 
being the Persian for honey, which in Sanskrit is represented by 
the word “ madhu.” In some districts this bee goes by the 
name of “ mom mukhi ” or wax fly, this word being also of Sans- 
krit extraction. The rajahs of the country in days gone by did 
* Tomato should be pronounced like potato. 
t Naiuke Notes, 1894, p. 86. 
