INSECT PESTS, 
There are few more annoying losses to a planter than those 
caused by some of the very numerous forms of insect life in the 
tropics, especially in cases where, as often happens, an, insect 
which though known to be feeding on the plant under cultiva- 
tion, inflicts for many years such trivial damage that it is quite 
neglected, till suddenly it appears in numbers so vast that be- 
fore it can be checked, much damage has been done and no small 
expense has to be incurred before the estate can be saved. For 
this reason it is necessary to watch for insects on the crops very 
carefully, and to keep under observation any whichinflict injury, 
however slight, lest they become from neglect really dangerous. 
In this region we are fortunately free from those insects, such as 
locusts, which invade a district in great flights, and in a few hours 
undo the labour of years, but we are not free from attacks made 
in force arising from neglected and dirty estates. Many trouble- 
some invasions arise from abandoned patches of scrub and weeds 
allowed to grow near or in the estates, round the coolie lines and 
elsewhere. Grasshoppers and moth-caterpillars often haunt 
these patches for some years unnoticed and gradually commence 
to attack the estate itself. Sometimes again a pest destroys the 
stems or boughs of the trees, and the coolies cutting or breaking 
off the dead boughs still full of insects throw them on the ground, 
or leave the dead stumps on or near the estate, instead of burn- 
ing them. The result naturally is that the insects continue to 
breed in the decaying wood, and a constant supply of the pest 
is kept on the estate. Much of the serious injury done by the 
coco-nut and nutmeg beetles in native estates is due to this neg- 
lect. If a tree is killed by any insect or by any fungus, it should 
be removed and destroyed without delay for fear of spreading 
the infection. 
It not unfrequently has happened that an insect which nor- 
mally feeds on some waste stuff such as dead wood, or decayed 
vegetable refuse, alters gradual^ its mode of life and commences 
to attack living plants, often inflicting considerable injury. No- 
table cases are those of the sugar shot-borer, Xyleborus perforans, 
well known for its habit of boring into wine casks and causing 
leakage, which, in the West Indies having probably been import- 
ed in a wine cask, attacked the growing canes and hopelessly 
destroyed some estates. The black coco-nut beetle again nor- 
mally lives on cowdung and rotten wood, but now attacks and 
destroys palms, and Xylotrupes gideon the grub of which normal- 
ly feeds on cowdung and decomposed vegetable matter, having 
found its way into the cane-fields commenced by feeding on the 
decaying portions of the sugarcane cuttings and has ended by 
attacking the living roots and destroying the plants. Some 
