If the pest appeared in Ceylon I believe that good seivice 
would be done by the little white-eyed Tit (Zosterops Ceylonen- 
sis), a small greenish bird with a white ring round the eye. On 
up-country estates in Ceylon these little birds work their way 
about in the Coffee in large flocks, most carefully searching the 
leaves ■‘hr spiders, insects’ eggs and larvae, aphides, etc. 
I put four of the moths alive into a glass case with a big Gecko 
Stentor , but though they remained there for four days they 
were untouched, though cockroaches and grasshoppers also put 
into the cage during this time were immediately eaten. 
Mason wasps and ichneumons are not sufficiently numerous to 
be of any use against such a plague of caterpillars. I he former 
kill very few larvae and of the 200 odd chrysalides which 
I hatched in captivity not one had been attacked b;> the 
latter 
Very heavy showers of rain at the time when the young cater- 
pillars are hatching and in large quantities are apparently very 
destructive, washing the tiny larvae off on to the ground in great 
numbers, when, unable to regain the foliage, they perish in the 
dust, or are destroyed by ants. 
Probably warm sunny weather with occasional light showers 
is the most favourable to a batch of these ppsts. The heavy 
showers at the end of February did much to reduce heir numbers 
and the recent drought has also proved very unfavourable to 
the insects, the pupae dying underground from want of suffi- 
cient moisture. . 
It is extremely rare for any of the Hawk Moth caterpulais to 
appear in numbers sufficient to make them an appreciable agri- 
cultural pest. The only other case in which I am aware that 
this has happened was that of the large Sphinx Caterpillars 
which attacked the Cinchonas in Ceylon some years ago. A.L.tS. 
Note. — A. certain amount of damage has however been record- 
ed as having been done by the caterp liars of the Death s Hea 
Moth ( Acherontia Atropos) to potatoes in Europe. H. N. h. 
Parasa lepida, Cram. (Limacodidce) . 
From Negri Sembilan Mr. Ashby sends me some larvae found 
feeding on coffee leaves. They are about half an inch loug, 
wood-louse shaped armed with four lines of processes furnished 
with semi-transparent stinging hairs. The caterpillar is pa e 
blue with four of the tufts, two at each end black, and a black 
spot on the anal segment. They seem to be the larvae of a spe- 
cies of Parasa near P. lepida and possibly the same insect, these 
caterpillars I have seen feeding on various trees and shrubs, and 
they are very destructive. Some of the catreprillars of this gioup 
sting badly and are very troublesome to get rid of by hand pick- 
ing. P. lepida , Cram., is well known in Ceylon as a coffee pest, 
and also in Java, where the caterpillar is known as Ular sere , 
Ular sintang, and U. sengenet. It forms a round biown p.q ry 
cocoon on the leaf, and appears as a green and blown moth, ai 
inch across or more. 
