Some bugs are beautifully and brilliantly coloured, but bugs, both field and house, emit usually a disagreeable odour.
The Aphides, or plant lice, when in large numbers, injure young shoots and twigs. A very pretty little one is found in Kamaon on the dabree tree. They excrete a white substance of a sweet taste, which cakes on the leaves. Another aphis is found on the sal or Vatica robusta.
Aphis Coffere, the coffee louse, is found in small communities on the young shoots, and on tho underside of the leaves of the cocoanut tree, but occasion little injury.
Neuropterous insects, like the dragon-flies, are carnivorous or herbivorous. Tho fecundity of the white ant is enormous, and they have males, females, and neuters. They will not touch fresh Huldu timber, but, on drying, the wood will be attacked.
Hymenopterous insects are exemplified in the bees, wasps, black ants, and flies. Many live in societies, and are divided into three elasses,—males, females, and neuters. Of their larva, some are carnivorous, some herbivorous; the perfect insects, however, live chiefly upon flowers and honey. A few are carnivorous and omnivorous, as, for ex ample, black ants: The Xylocopa, or carpenter bees, bore tunnels in timber, where they gather in honey and the farina of flowers, leaving a lump of this compound in a divided cell for the nourishment of the young larva, sub-cylindrical, whitish worms, when t hey are hatched. Each cell has, with the egg, a separate supply of this food. In the Kamaon forests there are three species of Xylocopa,—X. purpurea, Xylocopa ficea, Thompson, and a species found on the Nauclea cordifolia. This genus lives in colonies. They will not attack wood smeared over with tar, and will leave their habitations if it be applied to the canals.
Of the weevil family, the Rhynchophora, the genera Bruchus, Calandra, Curculio, and Rhyn ccenus are extremely injurious to vegetables, boring into the young stems of plants, and living upon their juices. The Curculio also injure felled timber by boring into it. One species or variety of Curculio, one inch in diameter, was found by Mr. Thompson several inches deep
in a log of the Butea frondosa. His observations satisfied him that these were bred in the wood. A Burma species of Curculio makes great havoek among the mangoes.
The ravages of some of the smaller weevils, Bruchus and Rhynchites, are highly detrimental to the productiveness of the northern forests of India. In 1863, entire seed crops of the Vatica robusta were destroyed. This family insert their eggs into the stigma of the flower, and the young larva becomes developed in the fruit or pericarp, and the fruit ultimately falls. The common gram beetle is a good illustration of the genus Bruchus. The species of this genus attack most leguminous seed-pods, peas, beans, gram, etc.
Brarrah, a wood-louse in Swat, which infests mosques and houses where old mats are lying about ; the place bitten by them becomes red and inflamed. The insect is of the shape of a bug, but larger.—Lt.-Col. alloeGregor.
Two species of the genus Bruchus attack the poppy seed when stored.
A longish weevil, seemingly a species of Lixus, one of the divisions into which the Longirostres have been made, was constantly found by Mr. Thompson under the bark of felled logs. It bores with facility through the softer parts of wood.
Calandra granaria is known to the people as the Ghoon, also the Ch'heda and Makora ; it is a weevil very destructive to grain. Ghoon and Ghoongi iu Hindustan seem to be applied as names to several insects destructive to grain and wood.
The enemies of the coffee plant are numerous, and notices of most of them will be found under the word Coffee.' Mr. Haldane, in a pamphlet entitled All about Grubs,' mentions several beetles which injure coffee trees. The most important is the Big Patna cockchafer (Lepidista pinguis, Burm.). The female of this beetle is nearly white ; the male is brown, and was named\Melolontha rubigi nose by Mr. F. Walker. Another smaller brown species of chafer mentioned by Haldane is Ancylonycha pinguis, TVallcer. species, pale green with yellow margins, is Mimela xanthorhina, Hope.