Bakoli is a small green caterpillar that destroys rice crops.
Many caterpillars avoid cabbages if dill be grown in their beds, others keep aloof from goose berry bushes if broad beans be grown near, and the use of pyrethrum is said to protect vines from the Phylloxera ; and other insects avoid places sown with hemp.
White ants and crickets are the inveterate enemies of the tea plant. Whole acres of young plants have been known to be destroyed by these destructive insects. It has therefore been con sidered advisable to fire, instead of fell, jungle required to be reclaimed for the purpose of tea planting.
A beetle, supposed to be one of the Melolonthida, about the middle of the 19th century infested the tea plantations in the Dehra Doon. Ten or twenty of them lay concealed two or three inches deep in the earth beneath the bush, and emerged at night to feed on the leaves. The existence of the plantation was threatened. But a party of labourers was told off, each with a hoc, twice daily to dig around the plants, and the beetles were seized and destroyed by boiling water. Bushels of beetles were gathered and destroyed, and the plantation freed from them.
The following insects injurious to the poppy and other crops were collected in the gardens at Dcegah, Dinapore, and Bankapore : A. Attacking the young poppy plant in November and December, viz. : Acheta campestris and A. clomestica ; also other species of Acheta.
Gryllus species, called in Hindi ghudya and phunga. Gryllotalpa vulgaris, the goorghooria in Hindi.
13. Attacking the maturing poppy in February and March, viz. : Heliothis armagera.
Noctua species.
Bombyx species, the Buro-bhooa.
If the Bhooa of Hindi.
the Kala-jhanga of Hindi.
Gryllus species.
C. Attacking poppy seeds in granaries : Tetranychus papaverre, the poppy seed mite.
Tipula species. Bruchus Sitona Calandra D. Attacking cold weather or rabi crops : Species of Aphis, Cassida or tortoise betties, lady-birds ; Haltica, sp. ; Coccinella, ap. ; Thyka cucharis ; Locusts, sp.
Of these, it may be mentioned that the crickets, Acheta, A. campestris, A. domestics, and other species called the or Jhang,a of Hindustan, attack the poppy plants from November to January, until the stem begins to shoot. A large species of this genus attacks the Casuarina trees. It lodges at the foot of the tree, and at nightfall ascends the tree, and cuts off the young top shoots. The crickets are very destructive to garden and field crops.
The cranefly, a species of Tipula, is allied to a gnat. Its grub is a pest of the young poppy plant, both on and under the surface of the soil.
Bala, HIND., is a grub which eats the young shoots of wheat or barley when about six inches high.
The Girwa or Girwi, HIND. an insect? which turns the grain crop of a brick-dust colour.
Gindar, HIND., an insect very destructive to growing crops of pulse.
Ecidium Thomsoni infests the fir tree Abies Smithiana.
About the year 1879-80, an insect in threatened to become very destructive to the rico crops. Mr. Wood Mason identified it as belonging to the genus Cecidomyia, and as related to the Hessian fly which ravaged the wheat fields in the United States. This genus, Mr. Wood Mason says, had never before been found in India, and he proposed to call the species Cecidomyia oryza, or the rice-fly. Ile considered it as likely to prove a most formidable pest, and recommended that the district officers should be instructed to make further inquiries, and carefully watch its progress.
The common rice weevil of India is the Sito philys oryza.
The Barar, HIND., is a disease? which attacks the rice crops.
Badhiya, HIND., is a disease? attacking growing sorghum, peuicillaria, and zea, which prevents the car filling.
A species of Cetonia is very destructive to roses and other flowers.
An insect, known as the nutmeg insect, attacks that nut, and to avoid it they are dried in the shells.
The stores of soldiers' coats were much damaged in India by a little beetle, Anthrenus vorax, Waterhouse.