30 
Dear Friend Meyer : 
I am here in the quiet little laboratory just 
teside the tamTDoo plantation upon v/hich you and I 
have spent so much thought and atout which we have 
talked so many miles of sentences and I sit dov/n 
in the sunset to tell you of the ghastly discovery 
which I have just made and which v/ill make you al- 
most shed tears, I think. 
. In looking for a scale insect which Mr. Morri- 
son found here last month and which is scattered 
over the plantation somev/hat Taut is doing little 
injury, I found signs of ill health which made me 
unlimber my microscope and sit down to the task of 
unravelling the mystery of why our tamtoos have 
done so poorly here all these years. 
This is what I found. If you pull apart the 
leaves so that the leaf sheaths are all exposed. 
You can do this lay successively pulling on the 
leaves (leaflets) from the tottom upwards, i.e., 
beginning lower down in a botanical sense and work-- 
ing towards the tip of the leaf you will find in 
about 60 per cent of the cases that the inner 
leaf sheaths are covered with a very small orange 
colored mite v/hich is so tiny that it is hard to 
see with the naked eye. These mites cover the 
surface and at this time are working to beat the 
band and the result is that the leaves instead of 
having a lot of leaflets have only a few, for the 
terminal ones do not come to maturity at all and 
the other leaflets turn a rusty color and even 
turn yvCllow and fall to the ground. 
Now this mite is everywhere scattered all 
over the plantation and it is doing a lot of harm, 
I think, although I find it now on leaves which to 
all appearances are perfectly healthy. Unless you 
tear the leaves apart you would never suspect their 
presence and this is the reason I think why during 
all these years we have none of us found it. 
The F.H.B. inspectors when they were here never 
found it at all and they inspected thousands of 
plants to be sent out in the distribution. 
Now the question is this. Does the disease 
or rather the beast exist over there in China or 
is it one of those miserable things that has crept 
in on our plantation here in Florida coming from 
the Yj-ild species of bamboo — the socalled sv/itch 
canes which occur everywhere in the low lands. So 
far as I know the thing is new but it may be old to 
the entomologists for all that. 
December 31, 1917. 
