PRICKLY PKaRS now WILD IN INDIA. 
301 
and advertised as ready for the insect on November 10th, 179B.^ Opun- 
tia monacanlha must have been the species, or one of the sx>ecies planted 
at Rishra : it is locally very prevalent at the present date. 
Next will be given the evidence that two species of Opuntia were 
not uncommon in the south of India about this time. 
Small enclosures, bounded by hedges of Euphorbia and Opuntia, 
are named by Wilks in his Historical Sketches of the South of Indiay 
iii, (1B17), p. Sd, as having caused the entanglement of Tippoo 
Sultanas horse in the battle of Poongar on the banks of the Caverl on 
September 12th, 1790. Then on p. 89, Wilks continues, ascribing 
this disappointment chiefly to the enclosures, which we have mentioned, 
he (Tippoo Sultan) some years afterwards ® ordered them to be entirely 
levelled over the whole face of the district, and it is a curious fact that 
he was materially aided in this operation by an almost invisible agent. 
The prickly pear or straight-thorned Opuntia (foot-note. Cactus Ficus-, 
indicay Lin. Ainslie) is the chief material of these fences, and the 
Silvester cochineal introduced into Coromandel shortly after the order 
had been given devoured not only the leaves but the root of the plant 
with such avidity, as nearly to have terminated its existence in the 
south-eastern provinces : while the Cactus ‘ Tuna ^ or awl-thorned 
Opuntia remained untouched by the insect.^^ We ask ourselves what 
these two Opuntias were. 
Roxburgh and Anderson experimenting with the wild cochineal, 
obtained by Captain Neilson, had found that it would not feed on Opuntia 
elatioTy but grew on Opuntia monacanlha. This observation puts two 
names forward as possibly the two plants indicated by Wilks : and 
that the plant destroyed by the insect was Opuntia monacantha there 
is every reason to believe : but it seems questionable if the plant spared 
was Opuntia elatior. It will have been noticed that Wilks refers to 
® This is how the original advertisement runs as quoted in Seton Karr’s Scicetiong 
from the Calcutta Gazettes ii, 1865, p. 602) : “The 10th November, 1796. 
Advertisement. To bo sold, that pleasant and well known villa of Ri.ssurah , . 
at the convenient distance of about ten miles from Calcutta To the promises 
are attwched ... about one hundred and twenty bighas of Napaulry, fully planted 
and now ready to receive the insect, which renders it a valuable estate, and which 
will, in all probability, pay in the first year a considerable part of the purchase money 
that will be required for it. For further particulars, enquire,” etc. 
^ The inferior, Sylvester or wild cochineal was introlu.^'ed into Calcutta in 1795, 
through the agency of a Captain Neilson whose ship had touched at Rio dc Janeiro 
on its way to India, and was distributed to Madrvn a Few mouths afterwards. This 
circumstance would indicate that Tippoo Sultan’s order was issued about 1795. 
