GRUB, a term familiar to coffee planters in Ceylon and the Peninsula of India, applied to insects which injure the coffee plant and coffee berry. Mr. Nietner tells us that the brown and white bug and the black a,nd white grub are the only important enemies of the coffee tree, and that the destruction caused by Arhines, Limacodes, Zeuzera, Phymatea, Strachia, and the coffee rat, appear to be of a more local and occasional nature, Bug.—The appearance and disappearance of the coffee bug, he tells us, is most capricious. It comes and goes,—now rapidly spreading over a whole estate, now confining itself to a single tree amongst thousands ; here leaving an estate in the course of a twelvemonth, there remaining perma nently ; sometimes spreadine, over a -whole estate, sometimes attacking a single'field, then leaving it for another and another. But the white bug prefers dry, and the brown, damp localities, the latter being found more plentiful in close ravines and amongst heavy rotting timbers than on open hill sides, and it is probably to this predilection that the shifting of the insect is attributable. The bug of course seeks out the softest and most sheltered parts of the tree, the young shoots, the undersides of the leaves, a,nd the clusters of berries. The injury done by the white bug seems more severe than that from the brown, but, not being so plentiful as the latter, it is of less general importance. The white bug is especially fond of congregating amongst the clusters of berries, which drop off from the injury they receive, and trees often lose their entire crop in this manner. The injury produced by the brown bug is the weakening of the tree and is thus more general, but the crop does not 'drop off altogether nor so suddenly. With white bugs on an estate the crop can hardly be estimated ; with brown bugs it can.
White Grub.—Under this name are included the larvm of various Melolonthidm, the cockchafers of Ceylon, which do much harm to coffee planta tions, youna 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 trees of line old coffee. Mr. Gordon used to dig up the soil at the foot of the trees and take out such grubs as he could find.
Black Grub.—The larvm of the moth called Agrotis segetum is •the very destructive black grub. This pest is about an inch and is most abundant from August to October. The caterpillar lives in the ground, but comes out at night to feed, and is very common and injurious. They attack- not only coffee trees, but all sorts of vegetables and flowers, and are very destructive to gardens and in the field, as they eat every thing that is artificially raised, despising grass and weeds. They generally appear only on certain fields, and will not go over an estate. The insect is not confined to Ceylon ; its ravages are well known in India, at the Cape of Good Hope, and in Europe, where it injures the grain and beet root crops. In Ceylon it only attacks young coffee trees, gnawing off the bark round the stem just above the ground. Where the trees are very small, they are bitten right off, and the tops some titnes partially dragged under the ground, where the grubs may easily be discovered and dislodged. The damacm which they inflict on plantations may be estimatebd, when it is mentioned that Mr. Nietner lost by them in one season, in certain fields, as many as 25 per cent. of the young trees he had put down.—Nietner on the Enemies of the Coffee Plants. See Bug ; Coffee ; Leaf Disease.