40i 
About 30 per cent, was found to have germinated in the War- 
dian cases from Ceylon and directly planted out in the nurseries. 
Till 2 days ago they did splendidly and reached the height of a foot. 
Coming on inspection to the nurseries this morning I found several 
young plants had turned yellow and upon taking them out I found 
that the roots just at the place where the plant was touching the 
surface soil were rotten. 
I think it must be a disease which I used to have sometimes in the 
nurseries for tobacco and I shall try to kill the disease by watering 
the beds with Bouill<6 Bordelaise. 
The reason cannot be that the nurseries were not sufficiently 
drained. The ground was hoed a long time ago and the nurseries are 
a foot and a half high. The soil is very porous and consists of 50 
per cent, at least of sand. I planted seeds in bamboos and small 
gunny-bags and everywhere I got this disease". 
The soil of these nurseries must be thoroughly infected with this 
pestilential fungus, and in cases like this it should be disinfected as 
far as possible with Copper Sulphate and Lime, and allowed to 
fallow, nothing being planted on it. Some years ago a very nice 
looking grassy plot in the Botanic Gardens was dug for beds, and 
cuttings of Ficus elastica and other plants put in, and also a plant of 
Melocanna bambusoides an Indian bamboo, all of which died. The 
cuttings were found to have a pink nectria-like fungus on the cut 
ends, the cambium layer died, and the plants never survived. Here 
again the ground was infected by a fungus and could not be utilized 
at all. 
Has any one met with the fungus referred to by our correspon- 
dent? I know of nothing exactly like it. 
H. N. R. 
ATTACUS ATLAS AND RUBBER. 
There is no more voracious and destructive Caterpillar than that 
of the Atlas moth Attacus Atlas. Its ordinary food is the leaves of 
the Sweet-sop and Sour-sop, Anona reticulata and A, muricata, but 
it will also eat all manner of other leaves and is the only caterpillar 
I have seen attacking the astringent Gambir leaves. It eats as might 
be expected from its large size a great deal of a tree, and reduces 
its foliage to rags in a very short time. Dr. Lim Boon Keng in- 
forms me that he found many of these caterpillars on his Sour-sop 
trees at Yo Chu Keng, where he has his rubber estate, and fearing 
that they might attack the Para rubber collected a number to experi- 
ment with. He says that on giving these animals rubber leaves to 
eat, they attacked them and ate for a few minutes then stopped and 
remained quite motionless till the evening when they fell from the 
twigs dead. The Hevea leaves had evidently a poisonous effect 
on these caterpillars. This is very satisfactory as we can have 
nothing to fear from this pest, which might if it could digest the 
leaves have proved a serious pest. 
7 fit 5 
H. N. R. 
