CHAP. 
216 SPICES 
enclose it in clotli bags to protect it, in order to obtain 
the seed. 
PESTS 
The chief pest recorded as attacking cinnamon is a 
boring caterpillar, which attacks the shoots. It does 
not seem to be very injurious. A similar one attacks 
adult trees in the Malay Peninsula, not only of Cinna- 
momum zeylanicum, but also of C. iners. It is of a 
pinkish red colour, and bores into the trunk often quite 
low down, the entrance to the burrow being usually 
protected by a web full of the frass of the grub. The 
insect does not appear ever to have been bred to maturity 
by entomologists, but it is the larva of a moth. 
Another pest recorded in the Ceylon Observer^ is 
the larva of a little moth, Metisor plana, Walker, of 
the family of Psychidae. It appears to attack many 
trees and shrubs in the neighbourhood of cultivated 
land in Ceylon. The larva constructs a portable silken 
case, more or less covered with bits of stick and leaf 
of the food plant on which it lives and undergoes its 
transformation. It eats the leaves and tender tops 
of the plants, owing to which the cinnamon cannot be 
peeled. It is difficult to deal with these bag-worms, as 
they are commonly called, as they are so well protected 
by their silk case that poisonous liquids thrown on them 
do not affect them. Mr. Green, who identified them, 
suggests that washing the trees with lime-water, or 
syringing with soft-soap and tobacco water might 
induce them to depart. The “ experienced planter ” 
already quoted mentions a minute beetle which breeds 
in the leaves, and sometimes does a good deal of injury 
by retarding the growth and rendering the wood un- 
healthy and unpeelable. 
The larva of what is probably one of the Tortricidae 
moths I have frequently seen in the leaves of adult 
trees, both of C. zeylanicum and C. iners. It spins 
two leaves together, feeding on the epidermis and de- 
1 All about Spices, p. 226. 
