195 
Another insect, a destructive Coccid, attacks the young setting 
fruit. It appears in numbers on the fruit spike as small but stout soft 
bodied creatures covered with a white fluff, and on their attack, the 
flower spike withers and blackens : the whole of the berries on a spike 
may thus be destroyed. This insect is attended on by colonies of 
Ants (Cremastogaster rogenhoferi) which probably are responsible for 
the spreading of the Coccid. The four pests just mentioned are 
always a menace to the pepper grower and his only remedy, quite an 
effectual one, is the insecticide already mentioned. The insects are all 
indigenous and no doubt they find a happy feeding ground on the 
abandoned vines. 
It occasionally happens that the pepper leaves are attacked by 
caterpillars, but I have only once met a case : this caterpillar, belonging 
to a Limacodid moth, was a green oval disc beset laterally with hairy 
processes, and covered all over with irritant hairs. A more destructive 
caterpillar is one which bores the stem penetrating at the base of a 
petiole. Subsequently the stem withers up and part or the whole of a 
vine may be destroyed. 
The roots are also subject to the attacks of insects : not infrequent- 
ly, certain white ants commit ravages on the root system and the 
plant may suffer considerably. Occasionally too, some damage is done 
to the roots by the presence of large fat grubs, dirty white in colour 
and sparsely covered with short brown hairs : these burrow in the 
ground and by their movements disturb the delicate vine roots though 
they do not appear to feed thereon. The large grubs are larvae of a 
stag-horn (Dynastid) beetle and may be those of Oryctes rhinoceros, 
the well known coconut beetle. An application of limewater to the 
neighbourhood of the roots is considered effectual in driving away the 
intruder. The most serious disease from which the roots are apt to 
suffer is of rather obscure cause though most probably it is to be 
attributed entirely to the action of fungi. The symptoms are a serious 
shedding of the leaves usually throughout a well defined area of the 
vine which is in relation with the fibro-vascular bundles coming from 
the affected part of the root. A clever gardener can usually guess 
which part of the root system is damaged and he proceeds to remove 
the earth so as to explore the sickly area. Then he scrapes or cuts 
away the blackened tissue and allows the cut surface to dry directly 
exposed to the sun’s rays. Afterwards he replaces the earth and the 
vine usually recovers. This disease is more likely to occur in the 
damp parts of a pepper garden. The roots of pepper appear to be 
specially sensitive to water, and prolonged rains sometimes bring about 
the rotting just mentioned. Drought also is prejudicial and may 
cause the leaves to drop off. 
John Hewitt. 
PATCHOULI. 
{Pogostemon Patchouli , var. suavis , Hk. Cahlin , Benth.) 
Patchouli has already been the subject of several articles in the 
Kew Bulletin. The earliest notice [K.B. 1888, p. 71] deals mainly 
I 
