The larva of a little moth, the Galleriomorpha lichenoides, and three caterpillars of the Boarmia leucostigmaria,' B. Ceylanica, and Empithecia coffearia, are found on coffee trees and other plants from September to December.
The larva of the Cracillaria coffeifoliella mines the coffee leaves ; it is very common, but of no importance to the planter.
The ravages of the large, well-known, beautiful locust, the Phyrnatea punctata, with its scarlet abdomen and yellow and bronze above, are not continuous in the coffee tree, but are occasionally very annoying. A swarm settled on a field of one-year-old coffee and gnawed the bark off the stems, causing them to throw out many shoots, and permanently disfigured five per cent. of the trees. They do not touch the Illuk grass, Saccha rum Konigii, Betz, but seem only to attack culti vated plants and trees. At Tangalle they destroyed plantations, and at Matillee Kandy the native grain crops were injured by these locusts. The larvm and pupae are as de structive as the perfect insects ; but this seems, fortunately, the only species of locust that does any real injury in Ceylon, and this injury is in importance not to be compared with that done by other species in other countries.
White Grub.—Under this name are included the larvae of various Melolonthidm, the cockchafers of Ceylon, which do much harm to coffee plantations, young and old, by eating the roots of the trees. Mr. J. L. Gordon of Rambodde considers the white grub to be by far the greatest enemy of the coffee trees which the planter has to contend with, as he never knew a single tree recover after their attack ; and he adds that they had destroyed, at Rambodde, in two years, between eight and ten thousand fine old coffee trees. Mr. Gordon used to dig up the soil at the foot of the trees, and take out such grubs as he could find.
Weevils.—The family of the weevils is one of the most extensive amongst the beetles ; and in Ceylon, as in Europe, many of its members do much injury to agricultural produce. Mr. Nietner had area nearly the whole sweet potato (Batatas edulis) crop of the Negombo district destroyed by one of them, the Cylas sturcipennis. The common
rice weevils Sitophilys oryzaa, is another instance ; and one of the cocoanut tree destroyers of the Ceylon low country, the Sphmnophorus plani pennis, belongs also to this family. The Arhines? destructor, a beautiful green weevil, Mr. Nietner had not found do any injury to coffee trees ; but Mr. J. Rose of Matturattee, writing to him, says, The mischief they do is plentiful, and if they were as plentiful as the bug, they would be the planter's worst enemies. Five or six acres were completely covered with them, and they consumed almost every leaf. Year after year they appeared upon the same place. One year they appeared upon a neighbouring estate in great force, and ran over at least forty acres. The same thing occurred on three other estates.' The Acarus co ea;, or coffee mite, is so small as to be hardly perceptible to the naked eye. It is closely allied to the red spider of the hothouses of Europe. Nearly all the year round, but chiefly from November to April, it feeds on the upper side of the coffee leaves, giving them a brownish sunburnt appearance. Individual trees suffer from its attacks, but the aggregate damage from it is not great.
The coffee rat of Ceylon, the Golunda Elliotti, occasionally commits much damage, seemingly to get the bark, for they do not seem to eat the berries. With their long.sharp incisors they bite off with great smoothness the smaller and younger branches, generally an inch from the stem •, and should the plants be quite young, just taken from the nursery, they bite them right off a few inches from the ground, and carry them to their nests in hollow trees. They appear irregularly at intervals from the jungles, and there is hardly an estate that does not now and then receive a visit from them. The natives of Ceylon say that their food in the jungles is a species of Strobilanthus, called Nilu in Singhalese, and that the rats only issue from their forest residence and attack the coffee estates when their forest food fails.