Ill 
NUTMEGS AND MACE 
129 
1860, recovered from the attacks of the pest by being 
abandoned in a mixture of bushes and trees which have 
sprung up since. 
Remedy . — It must be remembered that certainly at 
the present day, and apparently, too, in the early days 
of the nutmeg plantations in Penang and Province 
Wellesley, the nutmeg trees are grown in open, well- 
weeded soil with no shade, and extremely hot, so that 
the trees themselves are less strong, and the beetles 
have everything in their favour, warmth and light, and 
every facility for flying from tree to tree. Shading, 
as is the custom in Banda and elsewhere, is therefore 
desirable. 
The Chinese cultivators in Penang, I observed, did 
not cut off’ and burn the dead or dying branches of the 
aff’ected trees, as good cultivators would do, but left 
them on the ground in piles, or even used them to bank 
up the earth round the stems of other trees, thus 
absolutely bringing the pest into close proximity with 
young and healthy trees. As I found the beetle living 
6 in. below the ground, burying the boughs as the 
Chinese do does not kill it, and it can easily dig its way 
out. The irregular way in which trees in a nutmeg 
plantation are attacked is very remarkable. 1 have 
seen three trees standing side by side on a terrace 
destroyed utterly, while all around them were trees in 
the finest condition, with no signs of beetles even in the 
branches. But the dead trees were standing on a very 
exposed slope well above the tops of those on the lower 
terraces, so that beetles flying, as beetles so often do, in 
a straight line across the valley would strike these trees 
first. Here again shade trees would be of value in 
checking an incursion of pests of this nature. 
As is almost invariably the case in attacks of this 
kind, the disease commences with the destruction of a 
few branches, and the planters take no notice of this. 
The beetles increase in numbers, a few trees die, still 
no notice is taken. Then almost suddenly the disease 
becomes virulent, every tree is attacked and quickly 
K 
