45 § 
These crickets are extremely destructive, and one or two seem 
t*' be able to move down a great quantity of seedlings in a night. 
A bed of melon seedlings was thus destroyed by one of these ani- 
mals in a single night, not one seedling out of some hundreds 
escaping. Fortunately, as a rule, these animals are not exceedingly 
abundant, generally appearing in pairs. Their jaws are very 
powerful and f have been biltjen clean through the finger by one 
I attempted to catch, which was being pursued by a large brown 
sunbird (. Arachnothera :). These birds together with the Bulbul, and 
the t.o called Magpie robin, attack these crickets whenever they 
find them. The crickets, however, hide during the day in the 
ground, or in rolled up leaves on the trees. They are attracted by 
light and I have seen them caught in mosquito netting moth-traps 
with a light inside. On several occasions I have found them con- 
cealed in the clothes in a cupboard, they having flow.i into the light 
during the night, and surprised by day fled to hide in the darkest 
place they could find. 
A fight kept burning at night over a pan of molasses or some 
such sticky substance or of water to which kerosine has been added 
will catch a large number of crickets but chiefly the smaller and 
less destructive kinds. The big rarer ones should be traced to 
their burrows whenever damage caused by them has been noticed. 
— Editor. 
REPORT UPON A VISIT TO GREAT BRITAIN TO 
INVESTIGATE THE INDIA= RUBBER INDUSTRY 
IN ITS RELATION TO THE GROWTH 
AND PREPARATION OF RAW 
INDIA=RUBBER IN THE 
MALAY PENINSULA. 
i. Early in 1905, at the request of the United Planters’ 
Association of the Federated Malay States, supported by the 
Federated Malay States Government, the Government of the 
Straits Settlements seconded me on special duty for six months, 
and I travelled to Europe to investigate the condition there of the 
india-rubber industry with the object of enabling the india-rubber 
planters and the producers of the raw material in the East to 
supply their rubber in the form most suited to the needs of the 
manufacturers, and by bringing the East and West into touch to 
stimulate the growth of the rubber-planting industry. I left 
Singapore on March 2nd, and arrived in London on March 26th. 
2. My first action on reaching London was to set about ob- 
taining official introductions to various india-rubber manufacturers 
through the Colonial Office, the War Office and the Admiralty, 
and to amplify those private introductions with which I had been 
supplied in the East. 
< ■' . ' , % V ’ . • 
