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 seen nearly the whole crop of sweet potato (Batatas edulis) of the Negombo district destroyed by one of them, the Cylas sturcipennis. The common rice weevil, Sitophilus oryzm, is another instance ; and one of the cocoanut destroyers of the Ceylon low country, the Spluenophorus plaui pennis, belongs also to this family. The Athines? destructor, a beautiful green weevil, Mr. Nietner had not fonnd do any injury to coffee trees ; but Mr. J. Rose of Matturattee, writing to him, said, 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 rau over at least forty acres. The san3e thing occurred on three other estates.' The Acartts coffem, 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 stiffer from its attacks, but the aggregate damage from it not great.
The Coffee Rat of Ceylon, the Golunda Ellioti, occasionally commits much damage, seemingly to get the bark, for they do not seem to eat the berries. 1Vith their long sharp incisors they bite off with great smoothn ess the smallerand 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 in Ceylon 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 Strobilanthes, called Nilu in Singhalese, and that the rats only issue from their forest residence and attack the coffee estates when their forest food fails.
The injuries from other animals is not serious. A squirrel, the Sciurus Layardi, which eats the coffee berries, is common on Ceylon estates ; the pulp alone is digestible, and the coffee beans arc I dropped on logs of wood and on the ground. Jackals and monkeys occasionally do the same ; this is called parchment coffee. A deer will now and then come from the forest and nibble the tops of the young trees.
Mantis tricolor, Nietner, the 3fantis of the coffee tree, is green, lower wings reddish, with large blackish spot at the posterior margin. The female is I inch long, with 14 inch of an expanse of wings. The male is considerably sinaller. The eggs aro deposited upon coffee leaves, in egcoon - like masses of A of an inch in length, butTrawn out further at each end.
And what are the remedies to all these coffee plagues? 3fr.Nietner tells us that several means of check ing the extension of the bug have been proposed and tried. Amongst these, the introduction of the
red ant ; but their bites are so fierce and painful, that the coolies refused to go amongst the trees while the ants were there. Rubbing off the bug by hand has been tried, but it can only be at teinpted upon young trees without crop ; and Mr. Nietner, although allowing that an immense quantity of bug is thus destroyed, is nevertheless of opinion that the effect is but trifling. Ile thinks that the application of tar to the roots is a good sug,,mestion, although he is obliged to admit that hitherto no important results have been achievtxl by it. Ho adds that high cultivation seems to have the effect of throwing it off. But as the bug seems to depend on locality, 31r. Nietner does not look for any beneficial result so long as the physical aspect is unchanged. Ile thinks that if the open, warm, airy pattenas were cultivated, which the experiments on a large scale, tried at Pa.sselawa, show that they can be, the brown bug, which is the great destroyer, would not find the conditions favourable to its existence; or perhaps, if estates as a rulo were made smaller than they generally are, if the reduction in acreage were counterbalanced by a higher system of cultivation, universally carried out, the bug would not be so numerous as it now is.
In the southern parts of the Peninsula of India, the Borer is a name given to the larva of a coleop terous beetle, the Xylotrechus quadripes of Obey rolat, which injures coffee trees. The insects are generally about the diameter of a sinall quill, are always confined to the wood, and never cuter the bark until the larva has done its work, passed through the pupa stage, and is about to escspe in the form of a beetle. The eggs are deposited by the female near the root of the tree, and the pips borers tunnel up the heart of the plant. It does not stop short at the destruction of crop, but actually kills the trees. This enemy has been confined to the Madras Presidency and Mysore, leaving Ceylon unscathed. The borer- carries on the work of destruction entirely in the interior of the stem, the wood of which it rapidly reduces to a sawdust-like powder, leaving the bark intact. At first the only signs of the presence of the foe are a few small round holes in the bark, but gradu ally these holes increase in number as the grubs get more nuinerous, the leaves get sickly and fall off, and finally the tree withers and dies. If this devastation were confined to a hundred or even a thousand or two of trees, the planter could afford to grill and bear his loss ; but instances are nume rous in which an entire estate has been coinpletely denuded of trees by this tiny but formidable insect. For a time the borer seemed destined to defy all attempts to arrest its ravages; but it wan observed that the beetle, which lays the eggs froni which the grubs are hatched, avoided shade, and affected light and sunshine. Thus much known of the habits of the foe, the protection of the coffee plants by the shade of larger trees naturally suggested itself, and has been found a most effectual remedy.