24 
Indian Forest Records, 
[ VoL. 1. 
effect upon the lac since scale insects are notoriously hard to kill. Heavy 
jungle fires, however, are a most serious menace since a whole plantation 
might be entirely wiped out after the passage of such a one through it. 
(/) Man. 
As will be shown later^ the ordinary methods of collection of the 
lac in vogue amongst the cultivators are extremely primitive whilst at 
the same time being very harmful. 
No proper attention is paid to the future well-being of the tree while 
collecting the branches bearing the lac. They are often torn off the 
tree in a haphazard manner to the detriment of future supplies. Over- 
collection is also another result of a greed which wishes to obtain a 
maximum amount of profit from a particular crop without reference to 
future supplies or needs for propagation purposes. 
CHAPTER VIIL 
DISTRIBUTION. 
The lac insect is widely distributed throughout the Indian continent 
and exists upon a variety of different trees. A peculiarity of this distri- 
bution, however, is that whereas it flourishes best on one or more par- 
ticular species of tree in one locality in a different part of the con- 
tinent it will be found to thrive on other species even though the trees 
upon which it does best in the former area may be present in the latter. 
This anomaly in the life history of the pest may be due to two causes : 
(1) TJre host plant varies with the dryness of the atmosphere and 
the heat to which the insect is subject. 
(2) There may be more than one species, sub-species, or race of 
the insect present in the country. This point, although of very con- 
siderable scientific interest and importance, has not, up to the present, 
received much attention and will not be pursued further in this paper. 
These two conditions, which appear to affect the distribution and 
food plants of the lac scale, require to be borne in mind when experi- 
ments are made in introducing the insect into localities from which it 
is at present absent or in extending cultivation on a large scale. For 
instance, negative results would probably follow the attempted propa- 
