TERMITES. 
459 
nada forwarded to the Council of the Society of 
Jamaica, elaborate delineations of a fly that had con- 
siderably damaged the growing canes in that island, 
which they call the cane-fly. It was a four winged 
fly that punctured the leaf, and deposited numerous 
black eggs ; but when considerable apprehensions 
were entertained for the consequences to the yielding 
crop of canes, the planter was relieved by a little 
parasitic insect which made its appearance among 
them, and after fastening on the back of the per- 
forated fly, devoured it, and rid them of this hitherto 
unobserved pest. This cane-fly appeared to be our 
Delphax saccharivora, a visitor as yet only known in 
St. Thomas in the East. 
I have yet to notice the Termite. However dis- 
astrous to the planter may be the visitation of the 
insects we have described, they seem to me all of 
limited injuriousness compared to the havoc com- 
mitted by the Ground Termite, The common ap- 
pellation of Borer has been given to two very dis- 
similar insects, the Calandra sacchari and the 
Diatrcea sacchari ; the one a beetle, the other a 
moth. The transformations which these two insects 
undergo in their respective seasons bring their de- 
predations to an end before they have gone beyond 
some three or four joints of the mature sugar cane ; 
but the ground Termites devour the entire stock, 
ascend from the root to the crown of the plant, 
change the whole vegetable mass from a saccharine to 
an acidulous pulp, and establish themselves in consi- 
derable patches in some of the most favourably grow- 
ing fields. The destruction of the plant for all sugar- 
