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I

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND.
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

INSECT INTRUDERS

IN

INDIAN HOMES

^^3

CALCUTTA
PRINTED BY THACKKR, SPINK AND CO

TO

AY WIFE

AUTHORITIES CONSULTED.

IN the preparation of this small book I have to acknowledge my
indebtedness to the works of the following Authorities : — The Volumes
of the Fauna of British India (Binyham's Hymenoptera and Butter-
flies and Distant's Rhynchota) ; The Indian Museum Notes and Journal
of the Bombay Natural History Society ; H. M. Lefroy's Insect
Pests ; Sharp's Volumes on Insects in the Cambridge Natural
History Series ; Packard's Guide to the Study of Insects and Entomol-
ogy for Beginners and Ritz Boz's Agricultural Zoology.

For some of the figures made use of in the text my acknowledg-
ments are also due.

The figures on pp. 3—5, 6, 8, 9, 18, 22—24, 49i 9°, II2» IJ3»
147 first appeared in my papers on Insect Life in the Journal of the
Bombay Natural History Society. The mosquito figures on p. 2 are
from the photographs by Col. Giles, I.M.S., which appeared in F. V.
Theobald's Monogtafh on the Culicidic. The figures at top of page 6,
on pp. 38, 135, are from the Fauna of British India. Those on
pp. 1 6, 29, 30, 32, ico are after Indian Museitm Notes. Those on
pp. 56, 123 from Lefroy's Insect Pests. On pp. 79, 80, 118 from
Sharp's Insects in Cambridge Natural History. At bottom of p. 70
and on p. 115 from Packard's Guide to the Study of Insects. And on.
pp. 98 and 99 from J. R. Boz's Agricultural Zoology.

" To the solid ground
Of Nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye"

WORDSWORTH.

designs for the cover, title page, etc., as
also many of the drawings are from the pens
of the Author and his Wife.

Acknowledgments are due to Mr. S. Eardley
Wilmot, C.I.E., for suggesting the title of the
book together with a rough draft of a part of
the title page.

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

INTRODUCTION : — Flies and Mosquitoes — The Locust
and its Ways — Green Fly and Green Bug — Stink-
ing Bug — White Ant or Termite — Attraction of
Insects to Light — The Praying Mantis — Scav-
enger Beetle and Cockchafer — Scarabseus and
Scarab— Green Blights— The Butterfly ... i

IN THE BUNGALOW : — Green Grasshopper— Scavenger
and Cockchafer Beetles — Cricket — Mantis —
Lizard — Fish Insect — Cockroach or " Black
Beetle "—White Ants— Ants in the Godown—
Flour Weevil— Biscuit Beetle— The Wheat
Beetle and Saw-toothed Grain Beetle — Bees and
Wasps — Mason Bee — Eumenes Wasp — Yellow
Polistes Wasp— Bamboo Beetles—" Shot Holes "
in Bamboo Furniture — The Thatch roof Timber
and Bamboo Beetle Borers ... ... 14

PAGE.

IN THE GARDEN : — Orange Banded Beetle — The
Rose Bush Sawfly— Rose Weevil— Black
Weevil — Caterpillars — Effect of drought on Mon-
soon Garden Pests — Garden Locusts and Grass-
hoppers—Predaceous Ground Beetle and its
Grub— Praying Mantis — Predaceous Bug — Plant
Lice or Blight (Aphis) -Peach Tree Blight-
Ladybird Beetles and their Grubs — Seven-
Spotted Ladybird — Leaf Cutting Bee — Earwig
—Crickets— Cockchafer Beetle— Mole Cricket—
" Bherwa "—Rhinoceros Beetle — Wire Worm —
Click Beetle— Cut Worm— White Ants ... 56

IN CAMP: — Praying Mantis — Flower Simulating
Mantis — Stick and Leaf Insects — Tree Crickets
and Cockroaches — Cicada— Locusts and Grass-
hoppers — Leaf Butterfly — Froghopper — Ant
Lion — Six-Spotted Ground Beetle — Tiger
Beetle— White Ants' Nest— Red Ant — Black
Ants and Blights — Granary Ant — Big Indian
Bee— The Hornet— Danger of Big Bee—-
Anecdotes of Big Bee ... ... 105

FOREWORD.

MY Publishers have asked me to write what they
designate by the grandiose term ' Foreword ' to
this modest and altogether popular illustrated
account of a few of the commoner Insect Intruders
one meets in the Home, in the Garden or out in
Camp in this Land of Exile.

I confess to a feeling of considerable diffidence
in carrying out my Publishers' request and yet
dare not altogether ignore the task laid upon
me.

I would, therefore, say to my readers in esse
that for those who have at times wondered what
the queer creatures are who, without our leave,
invade our homes at all seasons but more especially
in the rains and where they come from, I have
written a brief account of a few of the commoner
of these unwelcome visitors.

For those again who love their gardens and
have so often to bewail the fate of loved and lost
plant darlings, I have, during potterings round
the Girl's garden, jotted down a few notes on the
pests she anathematises so freely and against which
she endeavours to carry on an active campaign.

Lastly, for the jungle lover, I, who am of the
Jungles, have culled, from a fairly extensive
aquaintance with the Jungle Insect Folk, some
of the commoner forms, and have inscribed a few
notes which may prove of interest to him who
looks upon his trips to India's Jungles as among
the greatest amenities of his Life in the East.

E. P. S.

V

INTRODUCTION.

A LL who have travelled east of Suez
•**• have been brought into sharp, one
may say into unpleasant, contact
with one great class of Animal Life—
the World of Insects. The person
possessed of no naturalist proclivities
may pass his or her life in England with
but the slenderest acquaintance with that
great mass of life popularly designated
'bugs.' Their knowledge is probably
limited to the household fly arid blue-
bottle, the sugar loving wasp and those
' nasty ' spiders, which by the way are
not insects.

INSECT INTRUDERS.

Not so in the East and more especially
in the moist tropical portions of the
East. Here Insect Life may be said, in
a Yankee form of speech, to boss the
situation and to reign supreme : and
most unpleasant can these Intruders into
our Indian homes make themselves. It
may be difficult for the stay-at-home to
picture what the Biblical Insect Plagues
meant to the Egyptian, and he may well
be forgiven if he good-naturedly char-
acterises them, with other Eastern
imagery, as a fctfon de parler.

East of Suez we know differently !

Have we not seen that common insig-
; / nificant House Fly

in such numbers that

-•••••• • -11

it has been impos-
sible to sit or stand, eat or sleep,
think, or even swear, with any
, degree of comfort ?

V Have we not ever with us that

most insidious of all insect
foes the malaria-giving
- 2

'

INTRODUCTION.

Mosquito (the figures show the mosquito
'Anopheles in positions of rest, much enlarg-
ed) who, light as any sylph on the wing,
approaches with that delicate swing and
pinging buzz which chases away sleep and
sets every muscle and sense on the alert ?
Have we not seen those marvellous
and inexplicable invasions of the great
Migratory Locust, the locust of the
Egyptian Plagues, gradually spreading
themselves through the length and
breadth of the Continent, from their
homes in the sandy desert fastnesses of
Rajputana, Sind and Baluchistan ?
Are not the periodical eruptions of this
pest still a source of mystery and a sub-
ject of disagreement amongst scientists
who have endeavoured to study the
habits of this insect and have wished to
give chapter and verse to account for
its migrations from its desert homes?
Have we not, some of us, seen or read in
our newspapers of heavy mail trains
brought to a standstill owing to great
3

INSECT INTRUDERS.

flights of this locust choosing the per-
manent way as a convenient resting place :
the numbers of the killed and dying in-
sects, crushed during the passage of the
train, rendering the rails so slippery as to
no longer afford a hold for the wheels ?
Do not whole communities turn out and
fight shoulder to shoulder to keep the
invasion from their fields and have not
all attempts proved so often useless.
Unchecked and uncontrolled, because so
often in the past so completely misunder-
stood, the invading hosts have passed on,
after clearing every green thing from
the face of the country, leaving in their
wake famine as dire as a succession of
droughts. Or, worse still, the females
before disappearing have deposited in
small holes in soft, sandy spots elongate
masses of eggs stuck together with some
siccable substance and having the ap-
pearance shown in the picture here.

Areas in which these egg masses have
been deposited look for all the world as
4

INTRODUCTION.

if "a heavy shower had recently passed
over them, the soil being pitted with small
holes as if made by heavy rain drops.
From these eggs eventually emerge
little black wingless hoppers, at first
small and helpless and quite unlike
one's notion of a grasshopper or
locust (insects which have a close
family affinity the one to the other),
but rapidly developing by a series of
moults or casting of the skin into
the insects here depicted. Some
few days after hatching, the little
' hoppers ' pack together and move
down into the cultivated lands in
well-ordered battalions and bri-
gades and divisions, in which
formation they spend the rest of
the wingless portion of their lives
devouring the crops : whilst that
gentlest, most incomprehensible and
fatalistic of men, the Indian ryot,
looks on with folded hands and —
does nothing.

5

\

INSECT INTRUDERS.

Does not the cold weather bring with
it plagues of Green Fly and Green Bug,
of well-known Calcutta fame, which fill
our soup and drinks and turn the mem-
bers of a solemn dinner party or a quiet
orderly club into active and eager but,
alas, profane collecting entomologists !
And worst of all, do we not all know
that vilest and most nauseous of all
insects — yolept the 'stinking bug,' so
termed for obvious reasons, which once
tasted involuntarily is, it will be admitted,
never to be forgotten ?

Again, have we not ever with us that
unmitigated curse, that cunning thief in
the night, the White Ant or Termite, a
'* worker and soldier of which are shown
here much enlarged? Can any one of us
boast of having ever got even with this
stealthy and untiring foe? All is grist
to his mill as we find to our cost when
some treasured oak cupboard or valued
wardrobe, luxurious Turkey carpet or ex-
pensive leather trunk is discovered to be
6

INTRODUCTION.

,bift an outer and worthless shell of what
it had once been.

But it is not only the abundance of a
few of the commoner forms of insect life
which strikes terror and disgust into the
bosom of the Eastern exile, but the
astonishing numbers of minute forms
which swarm around us and dispute our
right to a place in a territory so peculiarly
their own. Take, e.g., our lamps after
sunset. Visit the brilliant arc light of
some tall street lamp or of a night running
river steamer : it will be seen to have
attracted myriads and myriads of large
and minute forms of insect life. On
Bengal, Assam and Burma river steamers
the lascars will come round and brush up
pail upon pail load of self-immolated
creatures.

Or, again, the white napery of our
dinner table in the rains — and at other
seasons also — will show a crawling or
fluttering mass of forms amongst which
stalks solemnly or stands stationary that

7

INSECT INTRUDERS.

curious insect, surely some pre-historic
remnant of a past giant race of insects —
the Mantis or Praying Insect. A fierce
predatory beast this who will take dinner
with you with the greatest assurance and
without a by-your-leave ; for your softly
draped lights ensure for him many a
delicacy and fat toothsome morsel. But
one thing is likely to upset his careless
and dignified equanimity and that the
blundering stupidity and awkwardness of
those ever unwelcome guests, the great
heavy black Scavenger Beetle
or thick set Cockchafer, whose
booming ill-directed flight
appears ever to propel them
with a wearying and unvary-
ing directness against the
nearest object which will en-
sure their downfall with that
well-known dull thud. Their appearance
on the scene is the sure precursor of
a prompt and hurried exit on the part
of the fairer sex and an unrehearsed
8

INTRODUCTION.

shikar episode upon that of the
male members of the community,
aided by the imperturbable
native servant who thinks this
but another idiosyncrasy of the
never-to-be-understood sahib log.
And yet a curious interest at-
taches to these scavenger beetles,
for is not one of them the Scarabseus, the
famous Scarab of Egyptian mythology ?
Visit the tombs of the ancient Egyptians at
Sakkarah and Thebes and elsewhere and
examine the wonderful mural coloured
paintings which are as fresh to-day as they
were 4,000 — 5,000 years ago when they
were executed. Here you will see faithfully
portrayed the common Scarabagus beetle,
an insect as plentiful in the East of to-day
as it must have been in ancient Egyptian
times. Of such utility were the scaveng-
ing habits of this insect in Egypt that the
wise men of yore ensured
its protection by attaching
to it the sanctity of a saint !

9

INSECT INTRUDERS.

And the fair ones of those great ancient
races did not disdain to wear the image
and sign of the Scarab, even though it
^ had the likeness of a
' nasty horrid insect.'

What will not
custom and habit do
for us all ! We may
yet wear * black beetle '
lockets ! !

Sadly unlocked for,
are the vagaries of our
insect friends and
most unpremeditated
of the episodes their
give rise to. The
curious antipathy their presence
arouses in the human breast is
probably one of the most inexplic-
able of the many unexplainable
phenomena in nature, for it is
indisputable that many are of the
utmost benefit to man. Indeed,
it is a matter of common scientific
10

INTRODUCTION.

knowledge that the superior race would
be hard put to it to find sustenance on
this planet of ours were some of our
insect friends to disappear off the face of
it to-morrow. Huxley long ago showed
that those tiny insects the Green Blights,
which infest our rose trees and chrysan-
themums (and many other plants in the
world) would, if left unchecked by pre-
daceous and parasitic insects, soon eat
mankind off the face of this earth which
he is so often apt to consider made
expressly for his own delectation.

And it must be remembered
that all insects are not abhor-
rent to man. Beauty in the
insect world, it will be admitted
by all, exists. The wonderfully
brilliant Butterfly softly float-
ing in the golden sunlight on
shining gorgeously-coloured
diaphanous wing has been
sung of poets, painted of artists,
and admired by the mere
1 1

INSECT INTRUDERS.

layman from time immemorial. He has
also been collected, described and named
by generations on generations of babes,
boys, youths and men ; and we may
include many of the gentler sex, to whom
the seductiveness of the attractive beauty
has proved sufficient to overcome the
natural instinctive dread for the ' nasty
insect-'

But that beauty it is not for pen of
ours to describe.

No ! With a sigh we step aside from
the popular and attractive paths of our
predecessors to turn into that rocky
uphill one which treats of those forms
of life which one so often hears alluded
to as —

' Get out you little beast.' * Nasty
horrid thing.' * He's there, dear, I
know he'll run up my leg !! '

No ! In these few sketches of some of
the commoner forms of Insect Life one
finds intruding into our Indian homes
in this Land of Exile we do not propose

12

INTRODUCTION.

to deal with the Butterflies, but to confine
ourselves to the less well sung though
often met with members of that great
World which forms so intimate a portion
of our life in the East.

IN THE
BUNGALOW

VVTE all know the beautiful apple green
Grasshopper with long thin whip-
like feelers and wings which have veins
in them like the veins of a leaf. He
is a common intruder into our lamp-
lit rooms in Northern India during the
rains. Under the impression that he has
fallen into the pleasantest of feeding
grounds, he will sit upon the delicate
sap green or rose pink lamp shade and

IN THE BUNGALOW.

meditate solemnly on the illusory nature
of life which changes the most alluring of
food into tasteless fabric, or at times brings
the sun into most unpleasantly close
quarters. Or anon he will burst into
song, his repertoire consisting of a series
of most discordant metallic notes.

Curiously abhorrent to the gentler sex
are the clumsy dashes at flight made by
these harmless creatures. How oft has a
favourite piece of Mendelssohn which,
combined with the after effects of an
excellent dinner and fragrant cigar, was
unknowingly drifting one into the land
of nod, suddenly ended in a crash of
discord bringing one to one's alertest
mood, whilst the Girl's disgusted, not
to say slightly tearful, voice is heard
exclaiming —

" It's no good ! I simply can't go on !
There's that horrid brute again !

" Oh, dear, do get up and catch him !
He is looking at me and waving his
whiskers ! "

15

INSECT INTRUDERS.

" There ! Now he is on the floor and I

know he is going to crawl up " (the

owner of the voice being by now safely
perched on the music stool with
skirts close gathered round her,
after the fashion dear to our Aryan
Brother).

There is no help for it ! One
has to get up, carefully capture
the intruder by the wings on his
back (no other parts will do,
as they all come off) and carry him
outside. Whilst up one makes up one's
mind to do the thing thoroughly and
a peregrination of the room brings to
light many other intruders : Scavenger
and Cockchafer beetles slowly crawling
up the walls, humming blunderingly in
corners, or in various positions of discom-
fort on their backs vainly endeavouring
to get right side up. These are common
invaders of our peacefulness, during the
rains more especially, but there are many
species which appear at all seasons and
16

IN THE BUNGALOW.

always uninvited and unwanted. Swift
eriough on the wing in the dark, are
these scavenger brutes, for probably the
larger proportion of them are night
fliers, but once they get into a lighted
room, and lamps have a most pernicious
fascination for them, they appear to im-
mediately lose their heads, and peace is
only bought by their capture and ejec-
tion. The most superficial inspection will
show that this tribe of beetles are coated
in exceedingly thick plated armour and
many of them have large horns sticking
out of their heads and other weird pro-
tuberances, the use of which is very
imperfectly known. It is generally the
males which are armed in this manner,
and they doubtless use this novel form
of armature in their fights for the posses-
sion of the unarmed softer sex : if females
encoated in bullet proof plate armour can
be included in such a category ! Perhaps,
however, even the hug of a mail-encased,
spiney, horny-headed scavenger beetle

'7

INSECT INTRUDERS.

may be of some slight interest to his
sadly coloured hornless inamorata ! Who
can say?

Our tour of inspection will not end
with the ejection of the grasshopper and
scavenger beetles. Moths in various
stages of dilapidation or disintegration,
according to the proximity they have
succeeded in attaining to the top or sides
of the lamp chimneys, will come to light,
with many other self-immolated creatures.
A noisy Cricket may be found chirruping
in a corner. He is essentially an insect
of the garden and field, and we shall
have some remarks to make upon his
exploits in our garden chapter.

Another intruder of queer appearance
often visits our homes of an evening and
lie comes with a definite purpose in view.
Everyone knows those most curious of
all forms of insect life the so-called Pray-
ing Insect or Mantis. Almost ironical is
the name of Praying Insect attached to the
Mantis. True, he earns it from his curious
18

^

IN THE BUNGALOW.

method of posture, the front legs being
held up in an attitude of prayer. But
it is a queer irony which has develop-
ed such a position, for it is main-
tained with the sole idea of capturing
his food which consists of living insects.
Like unto other apparently solemn
and sober-minded citizens, the atti-
tude assumed is one of prayer, but
the thoughts are occupied very differ-
ently, as we shall see when we come
to consider him more fully in a later
chapter.

Whilst on the subject of the insect
intruders in the home I cannot refrain
from mentioning here the ' Lizard on
the wall,' for, though not an insect, he
is part and parcel of the so-called fur-
niture one becomes the proud, though
fortunately temporary, possessor of
when renting an Indian bungalow.
Everyone knows this little creature and
I hope everyone treats him in the proper
spirit as a friend, for such he assuredly is.

19

INSECT INTRUDERS.

I admit that to the new comer to India
the sight of a large fat-sided, yellow
lizard flattened against the wall close
to the wall lamps, with his great convex
black eyes sticking out of his head and
apparently fixing one with their glassy
stare, is a little alarming. But watch
him for a short space and you will see
the eyes fixed intently on some small fly
crawling towards the light. Moving in
short quick rushes at first, the lizard
finally approaches very very slowly in
scarcely perceivable movements until
within dashing distance, when a quick
movement, a gulp, and that insect has
left this outer world for the interior re-
gions of the reptile. Watch a little
longer and, if it is the rainy season when
insects are most plentiful, you will soon
see the sides of that lizard visibly dis-
tended like those of a puppy just after
its meal. Where they put all the insects
they catch and swallow of an evening
round a lamp has ever been a mystery to
20

IN THE BUNGALOW.

me. * They seem to remain on the qui
mve for hours, feeding all the time : and
yet they don't burst—at least I have never
seen that unpleasant fatality happen !
Uncomfortable as their presence may be
and unlovely as their appearance un-
doubtedly is, never drive away or kill the
domestic lizard of our bungalows, for he
is striving his utmost to lessen the num-
bers of our insect intruders ; and more
power to him, say I, for I have often
seen him swallow as a hors d'ceuvre
some particularly noxious form of pest
when he has been dining with me
uninvited on a neighbouring wall.

Our domestic lizard is very human
too ! We were out in a small rest-house
the other day in camp. The only bed
room was the tiniest of apartments with
a low sloping tin roof with one of the
ordinary ceiling cloths stretched beneath
it and sagging down in the usual manner.
Two lizards, a most devoted couple,
ranged over one wall, having their home

21

INSECT INTRUDERS.

iii a corner of the ceiling cloth which was
reached by an entrance where the sag-
ging left an aperture between it and the
wall. The evening, after the lamp was
lit, was the great time for this couple.
They then quartered that wall after the
manner of a couple of setters, and many
an unwary insect in endeavouring to
escape the frying pan fell into the fire.
At times, however, after our couple had
retired of a night, the domestic bliss
would be broken and then sounds of
scuffling and excited twittering would
come down through the ceiling cloth !
For the world and its inhabitants are the
same the globe over, and even the cold-
blooded unlovely lizard finds that bicker-
ings and curtain lectures occasionally dis-
turb the serenity of his night's rest!

Every housewife has an intimate .ac-
quaintance with, and will have often ana-
thematised the so-called Fish Insect. An
elongate, wingless, narrow, silvery little
beggar this, with his body of 12 simple
22

IN THE BUNGALOW.

segments ending in three long tails, por-
tions of which he apparently willingly
and readily parts with during one's ofter.
vain efforts to slay him. A curious little
relic this of a bygone age, for he is sup-
posed to be the nearest living representa-
tive of an Ancestor of all insect life and
comes nearest to the scorpions and spiders
at the bottom of the insect scale.

Many and curious are the legends and
stories pertaining to this queer specimen
of creeping life. Although so numerous
and common in the country, it may be
said that even the food he eats is still a
debated question. He has been duly
credited with alt sorts of base designs on
the Paris creations of the fair sex, and
many a bearer and ayah has palmed off
sheer laziness and neglect on to this
innocent little beggar. When clothes
and cloth materials long put away and
forgotten have been unpacked full of
holes, it is the bad 'feesh-insect' which has
often served to ward off righteous anger
23

INSECT INTRUDERS.

and well-merited punishment. Serious as
are its crimes, however, these are not
amongst them. The insect is really
partial to saccharine matters, and it is to
get at the gummy materials and glaze
used in the binding of books and the
framing of pictures that the fish insect
commits the great damage he is capable
of doing. Its mouth parts are not adapted
to enable it to touch shiny paper, but it
will riddle tissue paper and such soft
materials as muslin and tulle. The in-
sect's home is in dusty corners of rooms
or on the top of dusty rafters, etc. Clean-
liness in the bungalow, therefore, means
reducing the danger from fish insects
to a minimum.

Another common house insect is the
world famed and much feared (by our lady
friends at any rate) Cockroach, a member
of which family is our common so-called
' black beetle ' of the English kitchen and
other belowstair apartments. Known
to every housewife and cook is the
24

IN THE BUNGALOW.

cockroach. The insect is more sinned
against than sinning, as has been and
is the case with so many other forms of
animal life, for it really acts to some extent
the part of a scavenger and a scavenger
of no mean importance in India.

The horror and loathing which attaches
to cockroaches or ' black beetles,' to keep
to popular parlance, is probably due to
the rapid movements and skulking habits
of these insects. They are particularly
nocturnal in their habits, the appearance
of even the modest hand lantern sending
them skurrying back to their holes in
rapid flight. The common cockroach of
this country is a brown insect of lighter
build and more active habits than his
English confrere. His home of origin
from which he takes his specific name is
America, but it is probably a century
or so since he spread throughout the
world. He is a domesticated insect and
will be found commonest in the home in
towns and large villages ; also on river and

25

INSECT INTRUDERS.

ocean-going steamers, where oneoften has
the questionable pleasure of his company
in one's cabin what time he disports him-
self on your blanket coverings at night.

Probably the most interesting inform-
ation to the housewife on the subject of
these insects will be the knowledge of
how to free her house from them. Most
of us would rather keep our houses
clean without the help of this intruder.
Well then, take some borax, powder it
finely and mix it with the same amount
of powdered chocolate, taking care that
the mixing is done thoroughly, so that
each particle of chocolate takes up some
of the particles of borax. Sprinkle this
in the corners of the room and along the
edges of the wall and behind articles of
furniture. Here it will be picked up
and eaten by the insects, for cockroaches
are very fond of chocolate, but borax is
poisonous to them and will kill them off.
The mixture is cheap and non-poisonous
to man.

26

IN THE BUNGALOW.

Other unpleasant and common intru-
ders on our household peace are the
so-called White Ants or Termites and the
various forms of true Ants.

The well-known white ant has been al-
ready alluded to and perhaps merits fur-
ther mention here, as every householder
in the country is aware of the capabilities
for destruction evinced by this pest of
pests. Its insidious attacks are the more
to be feared since they are always carried
on under cover. A past master he in the
art of successful shielded attack, for he
moves nowhere exposed to the light of day,
but invariably shelters himself beneath a
covered way of mud, and under this
protection, which is most skilfully util-
ized, he is enabled to reduce the stoutest
beam to rottenness and powder without
one's being even aware that it has
been attacked.

Whilst in Calcutta a year or two ago I
was shown the back of some valuable old
oak panelling which had been attacked
27

INSECT INTRUDERS.

by these pernicious pests. It was a
wonderful sight. The front which con-
sisted of most beautiful carving was
now a mere match-board shell which
crumbled to pieces on being touched at
all hard. The whole of the wood at the
back had been destroyed by the termites,
and this in the space of a few months.
This is but a sample of what one may
expect from these pests, and it is difficult
to say what sort of wall short of a solid
steel one will resist their stealthy attacks
for any length of time. At any rate, the
problem seems to have defied solution
by the entire staff of the Great Indian
Public Works Department.

The life history of the white ant is
pretty well known. The insects build
those large earthen mounds found out in
the compound or in neighbouring waste
areas, or construct nests in the mud walls
of our bungalows, ruining a large portion
of the interior of the walls in doing so. It
is not from these nests and tunnels in
28

IN THE BUNGALOW.

the, walls of our katcha pakka bungalows
themselves, however, that we, the
occupiers of these usually most undesir-
able residences, suffer. From these
lurking places the worker white ants
issue in hordes and carry their earthen
galleries either in shallow narrow tunnels
or in broad earthen masses up the wall
or up the pillars or wooden posts and
beams or over the floors of our houses.
These earth sub- ways are being run up
to some sound beam in our roof top, and
once they have reached this, the horde
spreads itself over the surface under a
protective layer of mud and works its
way into the wood until gradually the
whole of the wood structure is removed,
the outer shell being left in such a condi-
tion that a casual inspection will give
one no suspicion of the state of affairs
inside. In eating out the heart of a beam
in this manner the termites leave strands
and knots of wood in situ in a most
clever manner, as shown here, these
29

INSECT INTRUDERS.

serving as supports to the galleries above,
much as we use mine props. Failing
these connecting links the galleries below
would cave in and heavy loss of ant life
would result. This is one of the stealthy
forms of attack which the resident of the
bungalow has to fear, for it may lead to
his roof coming in on top of him.

In addition to the worker white ant,
which is the member of the community
from which we actually suffer, the
nests contain the soldier, the king and
queen, and the grubs. These latter,
according to the way in which they are
fed, become workers or soldiers, or the
winged males and females which issue
at intervals from the nest in those large
swarms which give delight and at the
same time a heavy meal to all the insec-
tivorous birds and small insect-eating
mammals of the neighbourhood.

All will have seen these large flights of
winged termites issuing from the nest or
from some hole in the plinth or lintel of
30

IN THE BUNGALOW.

a door of the bungalow, This is a pre-
rfuptial flight and after returning to earth
the termites may be seen pulling or biting
off their wings for which they have now
no further use. These wings are of a
delicate gauzy consistency being much
longer than the insect itself and having
the appearance of a small bird's feather as
shown in the sketch here. Just above the
junction of the wing with the body there
is a small transverse thickening or suture
in the wing, and it is along this line that
the wing breaks off on the return of the
termite to earth. When the wing has
been pulled or broken off, a small trian-
gular flap is thus seen left attached to
the body. After losing their wings, those
ants which are found by worker termites
are taken back to the nest, but this num-
ber is very small, by far the larger
number perishing. The female on return
to the nest commences egg-laying and
lays a very large number of eggs, her
body swelling up until she reaches two

INSECT INTRUDERS.

to three inches in length with a great
girth.

It has been said that the larvae are
turned into workers or soldiers or male
and female winged individuals according
to the nature of the food given them,
Thus, should anything happen to the king
and queen termite, by modifying the food
given to a couple of grubs in the nest,
a substitute royal family can be produced
at short notice. It is owing to this little
known fact that it is impossible to get rid
of a white ant's nest in the compound by
merely digging into it until the king and
queen are found and killing these.

As to preventing the attacks of this
pest, there is little to be said. Tar
applied thickly to post, beam and rafter
will stop them as long as it is kept fresh.
It is also a good thing to tar the edges
of the floor where they meet the wall,
and the wall itself, for three or four feet in-
ward and upward. It will protect carpets
and almirahsas far as anything will.
32

IN THE BUNGALOW.

Some years ago, whilst still a careless
unhappy bachelor I had the great privi-
lege of being taken into a lady's godown.
It was impressed upon me that as I was
apparently endowed above the average
man with some notions of domesticality
and of what domestic bliss might be,
this crowning favour was shown to me.
I hastened to appear suitably conscious
of the great honour !

The serried rows of tins, bottles and
bags which apparently filled the over-
stocked shelves to repletion, backed by
stacks of soap, brushes, dusters, et hoc
genus omne of the order miscellane, did
not arouse great enthusiasm in my mind,
though I remember vaguely wondering
where it all went to ! I have since learnt ! !

My curiosity was, however, soon
aroused by the various forms of insect life
which apparently made this room of the
house peculiarly their head-quarters.

Cockroaches stole away in stealth as
if apologizing for their only too evident
33

INSECT INTRUDERS.

>, ••*

intrusion. My friend did not, or would
not, appear to note their presence and
hurried exit or rather entrance into
favourite caches !

The most noticeable of our in-
truding friends here were, however,
the Ants. Who does not know
them — who has not cursed them,
and I use the word, strong though it
be, advisedly : for assuredly a sweet-
toothed Bishop, though attired in
full panoply of episcopal state,
would find it difficult to shut his
teeth in time on that small wee word
whose offer of assistance is so
prompt in moments of tension, when
he found a much-looked-forward to
toothsome morsel a black crawling
^. mass of ants ! I've seen tears come

to the eyes but I digress.

In this paragon of a godown ants
were present : and if here, one
thought, where will they not enter !
Energy and resource is their motto

*i 34

?**

IN THE BUNGALOW.

andjiere they proved it ; for surely not
one of the hermetically sealed tins that
had been in the godown for a week or
two had been left untried ; the bright
wrappers had been eaten off in minute
holes or in thin streaks in the search
for a possible opening ; a bag of sugar
left unwarily open was a seething craw-
ling mass of black, Avith a thick black
moving waving stream, flowing both
ways, disappearing from it to a dark
corner.

The ant in question was that tiny
minute insect about y&th inch long

which has one of the most unerring , .

flairs for sugar of any animal, save a ^ «^t

child, I know of. Where he comes ^ ^ ^ *

from and where he goes to must often
have puzzled many millions of the human
race in their day. Stand a sugar-coated
cake, a bunch of grapes or any other
sugary comestible on a table in the aver-
age sun dried mud-brick built bungalow
in the districts in India and it will not be

** *.

V*

*«.

INSECT INTRUDERS.

long before some wandering member of
an out-post picket of this small species
will have discovered it. And the article
need not contain sugar either. Any and
every scrap appears to be worthy of
attention from this omnivorous insect.
If he can lift or move the prize, off it
slowly goes. Whilst engaged in his often
Herculean task he may be joined by a
friend or two. If the article proves above
* their capabilities, they will depart. Wrait

91 v. and watch a little and you will see them
,** return reinforced, running eagerly to left
i* and right, but keeping a more or less

generally correct direction till they arrive
at the prize they had left.

The one instinct which then seems to
animate them all is to fix their jaws on to
the prize and pull. They do not appear
to know how to shove ; they can carry
*g an article in the required direction but

• 3£ not shove it. Consequently the sight is

fiT-irifc^ witnessed of a general tug-of-war in which
the majority win and make a gradual

•* 36

IN THE BUNGALOW.

progress in the required direction whilst
tlie remainder are either fixed to the prize
with their legs waving futilely in the air
on the lookout for a purchase or are pull-
ing in a contrary direction awaiting some
turn of fate, which with a collapse and
roll of the prize gives them the required
leverage and proper direction. The size
of the object these small insects will carry
away to their nests is positively marvel-
lous and it has
to be witnessed,
and can be wit-

. -#•

India, to be
credited.

Observation would seem to show that
when they come upon a sugary prize
they usually feed, *'.£., extract and eat
sugary particles from it there and then.
Perhaps, for which there are other well-
known instances in the animal world,
they do not trust each other where
37

INSECT INTRUDERS.

sweets are concerned! Any other arti-
cles of food such as old chicken bones,
pieces of bread or toast, potato peel, old
_ >^ bits of dried skin,

dead or incapacit-
ated caterpillars
and other insects,
etc., etc., they
carry off to the nest for the food of
the community at large. These nests
are made in cracks and holes in walls
and floors, in cracks and holes in the
beams and rafters or posts and lintels of
the bungalow, and it is from such places
that the hordes issue forth on their pre-
datory excursions.

The other large black ant of the
bungalow, he with the big head and
general fierce ruffianly appearance, also
occupies similar quarters. All is grist
to his mill, and he has little hesitation
about robbing weaker brethren or of
helping himself to sugary dainties. He
is as common a visitor as the little beggar,
38

IN THI£ BUNGALOW.

but js perhaps most numerous in Upper
India during the rains where he will
invariably make his appearance on your
well-arranged dinner table and feed
greedily from your natty silver dishes
of figs and plums and dates. To the
careful housewife it is particularly exas-
perating on her return from the Club
to enter the dining room
to inspect her table before
proceeding to dress, and
find all her dessert dishes
a mass of black ants !
And yet this is the common experience
of many ! ! How to prevent it you
will ask? You will know — every Indian
servant knows — the dodge of placing
the feet of your table legs in glass
saucers of water ; and of tucking or
pinning up the corners of the cloth so
that they shall not touch the floor. Also
of only putting the dessert on the table
just before the guests arrive. But then
it is often forgotten altogether and the
39

INSECT INTRUDERS.

appearance of the table spoilt, and if not
forgotten, the ants often arrive and dispute
with your guests the right to eat it ; and
they have the start, since they like their
dessert early in the proceedings and most
of us do not care for their leavings.
Many people seem to look upon it as a
reflection on the housewife when ants
appear on her dinner table. I have never
been able to discover why ! She cannot
be said to be answerable for the insect
population of this land or for its vagaries,
and in nine hundred and ninety-nine
cases out of the thousand she most
certainly is not answerable for the struc-
tural or architectural beauties of the
bungalow she is occupying. She is prob-
ably quite content if she can prevail upon
her landlord to keep the roof over her
head fairly watertight and to put some-
thing else on her walls than the disfigur-
ing whitewash, which makes our houses
look like the prison cell : and many of us
are not so fortunate as to be able to do
40

IN THE BUNGALOW.

this.! Surely she cannot be considered
to be answerable for the state of the
walls in which the ants congregate and
build their comfortable, cosy and busy
dwellings ! !

From my cogitations on the Ant World
and their diligent perverseness I was
aroused by hearing the voice of my friend
raised in lamentation. Her fair head
was, 1 was going to say, was buried, in an
immense tin canister, or so it appeared to
me. From its upper end a most distress-
ed countenance emerged and I was invit-
ed, as an expert this time, to come and
inspect. At the bottom of the vessel I saw
a layer of a white substance which I took,
and correctly so I was informed, to be
flour.

Now, I knew little about flour in those
free and easy salad days and I don't
know that I know much more about it
now. L was, however, aware that it made
bread after being subjected to various pro-
cesses. Also I would have said that it

INSECT INTRUDERS.

was not a product of the animal world.
And yet this flour was alive and other
.knowledge that I possessed soon led me
to solve the riddle here presented. The
bin was nearly empty, but it had been
used for flour for years, and its present
state served to indicate that this had been
the case, for it was a crawling mass of
the well-known Weevil and another
smaller flour-eating red-brown beetle,
known as the Biscuit Beetle. There were
also present one or two predaceous insects
which feed upon the weevil and were to
all appearances thriving amazingly on the
accumulation of diet presented to them.
In fact, the flour bin contained as large
and happy a family party as I had wit-
nessed for some time. My hostess in-
formed me that the bin was never emptied
as when low it was refilled again. This
served the weevil and his partner's no-
tions of hospitality to perfection. I could
not help speculating on the number of
weevils I had consumed in various tasty
42

IN THE BUNGALOW.

and toothsome dishes I had from time
to time partaken of at my friend's most
hospitable board !

The life of this little weevil is a very
simple one. The female lays her eggs on
various grains (rice, corn, wheat, etc.), in
little indentations made with her jaws;
the grub eats into the grain, becomes full
grown, changes to a nymph or pupa, both
stages shown here, and then emerges as
the weevil shown above. The insect is
common all over India. The brown bis-
cuit beetle has much the same life history.
The predaceous beetles of which I show
two here, the wheat beetle and the saw-
toothed grain beetle, pass through a
similar life-cycle to that of their host, but
their grubs feed on those of the weevil and
red beetle instead of on the grain itself, and
these habits account for the merry family
party present in my friend's flour bin.
The insects shown are much enlarged.

I suggested as a means of getting rid
of this family party that the whole of
43

INSECT INTRUDERS.

the contents of the bin should be pitch-
ed into the fire or into a pail of boiling
water and that this procedure should
be followed in future when the insects
again made their appearance in the
godown.

The Verandah, broad and spacious,
is the feature of an Indian bungalow
and is often one of the pleasantest of
spots to lounge in ; or would be were it
not that at certain seasons the insect
intruder is apt to prove a most undesir-
able companion. Bees and Wasps will
probably be amongst the first of such
acquaintances to spring to the memory.

Amongst the commonest of the little
Bees in the latter part of the rains is that
funny little beggar the mason bee
(MegachileJ which forms little clay or
mud masses on our walls in any and
every conceivable cavity which he thinks
will suit him. We must all of us at
some time or other have taken up a book
and found the leaves stuck together by
44

IN THE BUNGALOW.

what appears to be a little mass of mud
situated in the hollows between the two
covers. If we break this little mass open
as we probably do at once, we shall find
it to consist of several elongate cells
placed side by side. If, further, we
examine these cells, we may find in each
either a little store of pollen and perhaps
honey and a small grub or a large white
maggot or a bee ready to emerge. This
is the little mason bee.

The female bee makes these cells,
half fills them with pollen, lays an egg
in each, seals them up, and her life's
work is over. The grub on hatching
out from the egg feeds on the store of
pollen thus provided, and by the time
the store has been consumed, it is full-
grown and changes into a nymph, from
which the bee gradually matures ; when
mature, it eats a hole in the mud wall and
escapes. If you examine one of these
sets of cells some time after the mother
bee has made it, you will see that each
45

INSECT INTRUDERS.

cell has a hole in it at one end from
which the matured bee has escaped.

This little bee has a companion in the
well-known leaf-cutting bee which I have
alluded to in the chapter on the Garden
since his forays extend into that region.

There are several of the Wasp Group
which have the same habit of making
clay cells in which to deposit their eggs,
one or two of which are common visitors
in our verandahs in the monsoon
months, but they provision them with
other things than honey ; live green
caterpillars being one of the chief delica-
cies provided for the future grubs. These
wasps have the same aptitude for seizing
upon available crevices or holes — punkha
holes in the walls, rifle barrels left
unwarily upright in a rack without a
protecting plug of cotton wool in the tops
of the barrels, books standing in the
library bookshelves (I have found the
insects a perfect plague in this latter
way), hollow bamboos used in the thatch

IN THE BUNGALOW.

roo£ all are serviceable sites to build in.
' Some of these wasps ( ' Eumenes ) make
little rounded cells of clay for their
nests, placing caterpillars inside them.
The cell being made, the female wasp
repairs to the garden and searches our
flower beds or vegetable garden for a
succulent green caterpillar. Alighting
gently upon him when found, she stings
the grub on the nerve cord and thus
paralyses him. Seizing the caterpillar
between her legs the wasp then conveys
him to the cell and places him in it ; others
are placed alongside, an egg laid near by
and the cell closed. Paralysing the cater-
pillars in this manner keeps them alive
and ensures that the store of food thus
provided for the grub which will emerge
from the egg shall remain sweet and good
and not decompose too soon. This pro-
vision of food enables the grub to reach
full size, when it changes into a nymph
and the latter into a wasp resembling
its parent ; the former then eats a hole

47

INSECT INTRUDERS.

in the mud wall and escapes from the
cell.

Some of the Fossorial parasitic Wasps,
instead of storing their cells with cater-
pillars, and the wasps which act in this
way are most useful friends to the
gardener, fill the cell half full with tiny
grey spiders, as many as 20 of these
latter being placed in the cell in a para-
lytic condition to serve as food for the
wasp grubs when they hatch out from the
eggs laid.

Allusion must be made to another
Wasp, perhaps the best known of all
verandah intruders in his season, which is
from early July to late November in
Northern India. I mean the long-legged
yellow (Polistes) wasp which swarms
at times in startling numbers in our
verandahs and rooms and appears to be
everywhere. He is a honey eater as all who
have ever inspected his cells will know.

This wasp is the architect of those
wonderful little pendant pyramidal combs
48

IN THE BUNGALOW.

which one finds so commonly sticking
to the timbers or ceilings of the veran-
dahs or bath rooms. Beautifully made
little nests these, and their mode of con-
struction can be easily watched. Three or
four shallow cells start from a little central
stalk, the work of one wasp. This is a
female who has survived from a preced-
ing nest. Having built these shallow
cells, she lays an egg in each and then
commences to construct others, at the
same time lengthening the walls of the
first made ones. In this manner some
dozen cells are made and in a few days
will be seen to contain grubs These the
female now has to feed on sugary mate-
rials. In a week or ten days the grubs
will be full grown and will change
into nymphs and then
gradually become per-
fect wasps. During
this period the old
female is still adding
to the nest and feeding

49

INSECT INTRUDERS.

other larvae. As soon as the first wasps
mature, however, they undertake these
duties and the old wasp now solely
occupies herself with laying eggs in the
cells as fast as the workers build them.
This nest continues until the cold weather
when the whole of the workers die off, a
few females only living through the
winter to found the nests of the following
year. Such is the life history of our
common Indian social wasp as it is called
— the long-legged yellow denizen of our
verandahs which rarely stings.

I have often been asked in the course of
my Indian experience — What is the
little insect which bores shot holes into
our bamboo furniture and into the bam-
boos and timber work of the roofs of
thatched bungalows, resulting in little
showers of dust descending upon one's
tables, chairs and floors below ? Insidious
little pests are these belonging to the
beetle tribe and, although so minute in
size, owing to the prolificness with which
50

IN THE BUNGALOW.

they breed and the gregarious manner
in which they live and work together,
their attacks, both to the bungalow and
to the furniture, are at times very serious
and cannot be neglected.

The worst of these pests and the ones
of chief importance in the bungalow
belong to one family of beetles, though
the insects boring into bamboos are
smaller in size than, and different in
species from, those which riddle the
timber. The method of life of these
wood-eating beetles is much the same.
The mature beetle bores into the bamboo
or timber, making a small circular orifice
in entering which has all the appearance
of a shot hole. When a number of beetles
have entered the same bamboo close
together, the latter looks as if it had had a
charge of No. 8 shot fired into it. On
getting into the interior a quarter to half
an inch, the beetle turns to the right or
left and, eating out a short gallery in the
wood-structure, lays eggs ; from 20 to 60

INSECT INTRUDERS.

per female, according to the species, are
laid in this gallery. The eggs hatch out
into grubs which feed upon the woody
fibres and structure of the bamboo or
wood, reducing them to powder and thus
undermining the strength of the article
attacked. When full fed, the grubs
pupate inside their tunnels in the powdery
mass in the interior and here gradually
change to mature beetles. These latter
bore their way out of the bamboo and
either seek out another to tunnel into to
lay their eggs in their turn, or, if space
and good wood is still available, they
tunnel into the same bamboo or timber
in which they themselves were reared,
selecting a suitable hard spot. From five
to seven such generations or life cycles
may be passed through in one year.

This brief glance at the life histories
of these beetles will at once explain how
it is that our bamboo furniture gradually
becomes pitted with an ever-increasing
number of small shot holes from which
52

IN THE BUNGALOW.

p>owder drops when we move the infested
object. The beetles generally select the
shady and unexposed portions of the
table or chair to tunnel into, and this is
the explanation which the hostess should
offer in her own extenuation when her
nervous caller has measured his length on
the floor owing to the untrustworthiness
of the legs of the inviting soft-cushioned,
silk-bedecked and befrilled but, alas,
1 shot-holed ' bamboo couch.

But these beetles are even more of a
pest up in the roof of the bungalow than
they are in the house or verandah, for the
attacks to the furniture can be kept in
check by rubbing turpentine or kerosene
over the affected parts and injecting it
into the shot holes.

This is by no means a possible remedy
when we come to consider the roof insects.
Of course, the species infesting the bam-
boos in the roof are the same as those in the
bamboo furniture. Those in the timber
are, however, different and usually larger

53

INSECT INTRUDERS.

in size, theirfrontupper parts being heavily
rasped with projections, and the beetles
being squarer and bulkier in appearance.

These timber beetles pass through
from three to four generations in the year
or there may be five, the number of
course depending upon the climate of the
locality in which they are living and on
the species ; it being a general rule that
there are more generations of an insect
in a year in a damp hot climate than
in a cold dry one.

I have found that the best way to
preserve the timber and bamboos in the
roof of the bungalow and the timber up-
rights, etc., is to soak them for a more
or less long period in crude Rangoon oil.
The articles should be first thoroughly
soaked in water (and more especially is
this necessary with bamboos) for a couple
of days and then soaked for 48 hours (in
the case of bamboos) in the oil. The
period would be longer for the small poles
used in the roof and longer still for the

54

IN THE BUNGALOW.

larger timber portions. Of course, there
is the objection to the use of this material
in thatched roofed bungalows that it will
render the house more liable to fire. This
is true, but those with whom I have dis-
cussed the matter have usually been of
the opinion that the danger from fire is
always so great in the case of thatch-
roofed houses that it would not be appre-
ciably heightened by the inclusion of
the soaked beetle-proof materials in the
roof, whilst their use undoubtedly greatly
lengthens the life of the latter. (The
beetles are shown here enlarged.)

55

N THE
GARDEN

TN the early rains our gardens in North
•*• India suffer from a most pernicious
pest and one which will be well known to
all gardeners — I allude to the black and
Orange Banded Beetle. This insect is
one of the oil or blister beetles of which we
have a small representative in England.
It possesses some medicinal properties
and is dried and crushed up and sold
medicinally in the bazars of this country.
The beetle is partial to mallows (Hibis-
cus], feeding on and destroying the flower-

56

IN THE GARDP:N.

buds, leaves and petioles and stripping
the rind from the green shoots. But in
years when this banded robber is
numerous, it by no means confines itself
to the mallow, but devours flower-
buds of all sorts, doing great harm to
cucurbitaceous and leguminous plants,
to rose bushes, and even seeks out trees !
I have seen the green fruit of the Arto-
carpus peeled and stripped down to the
stone by half-a-dozen of these beetles
clustered on one fruit.

The insect stays some 6 — 12 weeks
(July to October) in the garden and
during this period commits a considerable
amount of damage. The beetle lays
its eggs in masses either on the soil or on
grasses and low herbaceous plants. The
grubs hatching out from these eggs are
very active, but little is known about them.

This orange and black ruffian requires

a good deal of watching, and I have found

the best way of dealing with him is to put

on a few chokras to collect the insects

57

INSECT INTRUDERS.

when they first begin to appear in the
garden. Each boy should be given a
pail of water mixed with a little kerosine,
and the beetles as soon as collected,
should be thrown into this. With a
little care and close supervision a garden
can be cleared of the pest in this
manner in ordinary years. The owner
should, however, endeavour to get his
neighbours to do the same, otherwise he
will suffer from invasion from areas out-
side his own territory.

Most people are fond of roses and
many there are who will take trouble
over this beautiful flower to the exclusion
of all others. In the late rains and early
autumn whilst the trees are putting forth
the effort which gives us those beautiful
blooms, often the most perfect of the
season, there are several insects to be
on the lookout for.

The first is a small green caterpillar
which appears about the first week
to middle of July. Sometimes in

58

IN THE GARDEN.

potintless numbers it invades and entirely
strips the trees of their leaves. The cater-
pillars work up a long rains shoot, of
which we have perhaps been particularly
proud and which held out
the promise of many per-
fect blooms, and eat all the
green leafy portion down,
leaving only mid ribs, stalks
and green stem intact. A
plant showing these naked
long shoots can be easily
recognized as suffering from
this pest. This caterpillar
exactly resembles a small
butterfly or moth one. It
is, however, neither as it
has several pairs of legs,
more than the 8 pairs pos-
sessed by the latter. It is
really the grub of an insect
known as a Saw-fly.

The eggs are laid on the
leafstalk. The little saw-fly

59

INSECT INTRUDERS.

female has a sharp pointed instrument at
the end of her body, and by means of this
she cuts two rows of parallel diagonal in-
cisions down the long green shoots of the
rose bush as shown here and places an egg
in each. These incisions may number as
many as 60—70. In other words, each
little fly lays as many as 60— 70 eggs and
the great powers of increase possessed by
this insect are thus easily
accounted for. The tiny
grub possibly feeds for a
few hours in his little cradle
in the stem before he quits it
to devour the leaves in the
manner detailed below.

After the young larvae
have left the cells, the
remains of the epidermis
over them peels off, the cells
shrink, and you see on the
stem a brown patch consist-
ing of an elongated elliptical
depression occupied by two
60

IN THE GARDEN.

rows of parallel little cells which have
turned brown ; two such depressions are to
be seen in the drawing shown on page 59.

The young caterpillars on hatching
are comic little chaps and may be seen
feeding together in a row on the under
side of the outer edge of the leaf. They
are at this time quite small, about i 8 inch
in length with black head and front
segments and green behind. At this
stage they only hold on to the leaf by
means of their front 3 pairs of legs, the
rest of the body being held up at an
angle to the leaf and being waved about
from side to side as the grub feeds. As
they grow older, the caterpillars separate
and spread over the plant, usually one
or two feeding together on one leaf.
They always commence on the outer edge
of the latter and eat it down to the mid
rib on either side.

The caterpillar grows to full size in
about ten days to a fortnight, and further
generations of the grubs will be found in
61

INSECT INTRUDERS.

August, the latter part of September and
about the middle or 3rd week in October.
When the caterpillars are full grown, each
spins a small cocoon, attaching it to the
shoot or leaf stalk by means of a few
silken threads. The fly (shown enlarged
on page 61) comes out of this cocoon
in about five days or even less.

This little caterpillar is a real pest to
the rose bushes, as complete defoliation
means the loss of many fine autumn
blooms. Spraying the plants with soap
suds, tobacco juice, or dilute kerosine is a
good remedy for killing the caterpillars
if one is possessed of a sprayer. Those
who have not one will find that the
caterpillars can easily be collected from
the bushes and killed at the beginning
of the July and August attacks, if they
are marked down then. Once, however,
the caterpillars have been allowed to get
to the third generation or fourth, one
must not look for any fine blooms from
the trees for the rest of that season.
62

IN THE GARDEN.

, There is another small pest of the rose
bushes in autumn, and he is an insidious
little foe on account of his small size. It
is a tiny black Weevil who sits on the
shoots and flower buds with a light airy
grace, his little head, with its
fine straight snout, tilted out
at an angle of enquiry. This
little pest drills holes through
the rose buds before they
have opened, and whilst still enveloped
in the green calyx and also girdles and
kills the delicate young red terminal
shoots with their short stalk bearing
the two or three delicate young leaves.
Only close search will discover this little
pest, as he is not more than ^th inch in
length. He is not easy to catch as he
is quick on the wing, and if frightened,
like so many of his kind, feigns death
and drops from the plant to the ground
beneath with legs and antennas tucked
away close to the sides. Search for
him there is hopeless.

63

INSECT INTRUDERS.

I have found that the best way to
circumvent him is to place a white cloth
on the ground beneath the rose bush
and then shake the bush several times
sharply. The weevils true to their
nature will drop on to the cloth and they
should then be quickly collected and
killed. I have not discovered where the
grub of this beetle lives, but it may be in
the inside of the shoots and of the petioles
as I have found numbers killed by a small
grub which eats out the heart of them,
causing them to dry up.

There is another of this tribe of beetles,
a much more fearsome looking brute,
which in North India confines itself to
the tree mallow (Hibiscus
syriacus), appearing on it in
the early rains. This is a
large bulky globular black
Weevil, the back of him
covered with knobby projec-
tions and the thick snout
being curved and held
64

IN THE GARDEN.

vertically downwards. This insect strips
the rind off the shoots of the tree, attack-
ing- the green petioles and flower-buds and
stalks. When numerous, the result of the
work of this pest and that of the banded
blister thief, for they will be found together
on the tree, is that the foliage of the plants
becomes scantier and scantier and the
flowers, those that are left, open with cut
and dishevelled petals, the blooms being
an eye-sore on the plant and useless
for the table. Collection as employed
for the banded oil beetle is the best way
to get rid of this unwelcome visitor,
which owing to its considerable size
— half an inch long — is easily seen.

Of Caterpillars in the garden their
number is legion, but there is one which
is occasionally pre-eminent during its
periods of abundance. I allude to a
silky black beggar vividly picked out
with orange and red and white spots
and little stripes. He is a striking object
this, and once seen in any numbers, is

65

INSECT INTRUDERS.

not likely to be forgotten. The heaviest
of monsoon showers cause this grub
no discomfort, and he appears to be
pretty well omnivorous, though succulent
flower-buds are his specialty. He is a
gregarious creature, loving to feed and
destroy in companionship, and because
of his latest exploit amongst the Girl's
pot plants I depict him here.

This year this caterpillar has been far
from conspicuous, but the autumn
brought him to light right enough. I
found a happy family party of a baker's
dozen of various sizes in the sheath
enclosing a number of the flower-buds
of the beautiful white star-clustered
Eucharis lily. When found, the spoliator
was immediately destroyed, but only one
out of that cluster of flower-buds was
saved. The others had the heart eaten
out of them and were totally destroyed.

Succulent lily buds and all buds of this
nature are beloved of this pest, and he is
ever found abundantly on the beautiful
66

IN THE GARDEN.

rarins-flowering Pancratium lily. The
destruction he commits in the flower-
buds of this beautiful plaqt is at times
appalling, whole flower heads being
destroyed or reduced to tattered remnants
by the caterpillars. Thanks to his gaudy
colouring, which is probably a warning
colouration to choke off birds from try-
ing him as a delicacy, he is easily seen,
and I think hand picking can be use-
fully tried or a mixture of tobacco juice.
Soap suds are useless. He thrives on
them ! He turns into a little chrysalis
and this into a winged insect and must
be got rid of at once in the caterpillar
stage when found.

I have noticed that one and all of
these rains garden pests appear to suffer
seriously from a long drought. The
drought which commenced with the
cessation of the rains in Northern India
about 20th August 1907 and ended
with the breaking of the rains on the
1 9th June 1908 appears to have been
67

INSECT INTRUDERS.

particularly deleterious to some of the
garden monsoon insect pests, for in
8 years I never saw such fine flowers
in the gardens of Dehra during the
monsoon or so few of the yellow and
black-banded oil beetles, the large black
weevil, the small one, and the saw-
fly larvae, though the latter appeared
to have suffered least. This is worth
noticing because a long drought is
generally favourable to the increase of
most insect life. It may be that drought
is unfavourable to those forms which
appear in our gardens more particularly
during the rainy months and live and
feed on the external parts of plants. It
would appear to be a reasonable surmise
perhaps.

Locust and Grasshopper pests are
ubiquitous in India, and one and all of
us who have any love for our Garden will
have seen, and suffered from, their
depredations. There is one little pest,
green in colour but smaller than the green
68

IN THE GARDEN.

'^songster' which visits our rooms at
night so often in the rains and springs
his discordant notes so metallicly and
suddenly on our ears.

This little garden Locust has a
pointed snout and short feelers,
and he feeds with avidity in the
autumn on dahlia blossoms, cut-
ting down the petals and giving
the flowers a most ragged and dis-
hevelled appearance. A tiresome
little brute this, and he has many
confreres who cheerfully eat down
our young annuals as soon as
they appear above ground. A
mild solution of arsenic sprayed
lightly on blossom and seedling
will not come amiss to get rid of
these curses to our garden's wel-
fare, for in early autumn many of
them will be found to be wingless
or to bear little sprouting wings
on their backs. This means
that they have several weeks of

69

INSECT INTRUDERS.

feeding before them in this ' hopper '
stage, for as yet they cannot fly, and this
feeding is to be done at our expense on
our pet plants and blossoms. Whether
they have got short horns, when they
are Locusts, or whether they possess
long fine ones, when they are Grass-
hoppers, they one and all feed on
greenery and are there but for the one
purpose to endeavour to put to shame
our gardening efforts.

Of course, all the insects one finds on
one's plants or running about on the
seed beds are not present as the enemies
of the gardener !

For instance, the little black Beetle
often seen running over the beds or
to be found amongst dead leaves is a
predaceous insect and feeds upon various
insect pests — bugs and others of the
garden and field. Its elongate whitish
yellow grub is also predaceous in its
habits and feeds upon noxious pest
grubs.

70

IN THE GARDEN.

• The weirdly built Mantis or Praying
Insect, to which we have already had
occasion to allude, is another gardener's
friend. He may be seen
taking up his position on
some leaf or gaudy brilliant
flower where, assuming a
thoughtful attitude, he
awaits what the gods or the
brilliant attractions or per-
fume of his flower will send
him.

These flower-haunting
praying insects are often
very handsomely coloured,
the marking and colour-
ations being in harmony
with those of the plant
structures on which they
take up their position. The
one shown on the Canna
flower is a beautiful little
mantis which is quite com-
mon and may be often seen

71

INSECT INTRUDERS.

shikaring slowly over the brilliant
flowers during1 the rainy months.

The observant gardener will have
noticed on his rose leaves at intervals
during the monsoon a little cluster of
8 — 12 round white translucent objects
looking like a little cluster of a child's
tiny white beads. These little clusters
are eggs. It is possible that they
contain some poisonous matter in them
inimical to birds and to ordinary
predaceous insect life since they are
invariably deposited exposed and
easily visible on the leaf and yet they
do not appear to get eaten.

If these little clusters are watched, one
day a number of small blackish insects
will be seen to emerge from the eggs.
They remain for a short time clustered
round the broken outer coverings, but
soon acquire strength enough to wan-
der off separately over the rose bush.
These little insects are Bugs, that is,
their mouth parts consist of a proboscis
72

IN THE GARDEN.

or beak which in this case is sharp-point-
ed : for they are predaceous bugs and feed
on plant lice or blights, as also does the
little yellow and black Lady Bird beetle
shown on the chrysanthemum stem in
the figure.

Everyone knows the small sap-green
Blight of the rose bush, which cluster
on the under sides of the leaves and on
the green succulent stems through the
summer months, and the black blight
which infests the upper parts of the stems
and flower stalks of chrysanthemums in
the autumn. These little insects spend
their lives sucking the sap from the
plants. The females lay young lice in-
stead of eggs, and these latter mature
and commence producing young in a
week or ten days from birth. They are
a dangerous group of insects, so much so
that Huxley calculated that the produce
of a single blight, or Aphis as it is
called, would, in the course of ten gen-
erations, supposing all the individuals

73

INSECT INTRUDERS.

to survive, " contain more ponderable
substance than 500 millions of stout men,
t.e., almost more than the total popula-
tion of China ! ! "

The little bug's we have seen develop-
ing from the egg cluster described above
feed upon these pests of our rose bushes
and chrysanthemums and thus form
a most useful servant and friend to
man.

Those of us who have apricot and
peach trees in the garden will have
noticed in the spring, when the tender
new leaves have clothed the ends of the
young green branches with a delicate
green tracery, that after a time these
leaves commence to bunch and curl up
into unsightly cork-screw sticky masses
which gradually turn yellow brown to
black and die. I n cases of severe attack
the whole of the new spring growth may
be lost in this way and a very poor crop
of fruit or no crop at all will be the
result.

74

IN THE GARDEN.

This loss is entirely caused by one of
these small blights, a tiny greyish yellow
insect which clusters in colo-
nies round the new shoots and
on the new leaves of the trees
and piercing through the stem
or leaf insert their beaks in the
tissue and suck out the sap.
They may be likened to so
many little animated siphons
sucking in and exuding the
sap in one continuous stream.
The exudations account for the
sticky state of the
curled up leaf masses
and of the older V
leaves and branches
of the tree. If the attack is
discovered early, it can be stop-
ped by spraying the trees with
a kerosene emulsion mixture made as
follows : — Boil a solution of soap and
water, add kerosene up to 10 per cent.,
churn up the mixture and then spray it
75

INSECT INTRUDERS.

on with one of the common hand-spraying
machines.

If you observe this Aphis attack care-
fully and open out the curled up leaf

IW, masses, you will almost certainly find in
\ them some bright red or yellow spotted

^ • oval beetles, the common little Lady Bird
beetles of our nursery days and rhymes.
Never kill these ! They are most useful
beggars, as are their grubs, grey, active,
elongate, six-legged little objects, for
they feed upon the plant lice and are
there for this purpose alone.

A common red one with 7 black spots
on either side of its back (shown here
natural size and enlarged) is spread all
over the world and is a friend of almost
incalculable value to man. It is the
commonest one of our homeland and
the friend of our nursery days. Others
there are, red and orange and pale
yellow with varying black marks on their
wing cases. They are all friends and
should be treated as such.

IN THE GARDEN.

Ar> insect which is much in evidence in
the garden during the latter part of the
rains, or perhaps we should say that the
signs of its work are very noticeable at
this period, is the little Leaf-Cutter Bee
(Magachile). This little insect decorates
the leaves of our roses by scalloping out
the edges, small almost circular pieces
being cut out by the bee for architec-
tural purposes. The prominent and
handsome white leaves of the Mussaenda
which serve to attract insects to the minute
yellow flowers of this shrub are also
treated in a similar manner by the leaf-
cutter. The insect cannot be said to cause
harm since it is rare to find the defolia-
tion committed on any one tree heavy ;
nor is the work of the little insect-artisan
unsightly, since the piece taken out is
beautifully circular and symmetrical, no
ragged and jagged edge being left to
offend the eye, as is almost invari-
ably the case when caterpillars are at
work.

77

INSECT INTRUDERS.

It will be asked — Why does the bee
take the trouble to cut out these circular
pieces of leaf tissue since the insect itself
is not a leaf-eater? The answer is simple
and explains a most ingenious
method of nest making. The bee
usually builds in decaying dry wood,
making use of cracks or holes in it
or using the hollow interior of a
bamboo or the hol-
lowed out interior of
a sapling tree or dry
perennial. Easy in-
gress and egress is
attained by a natural
or artificially made
hole on one side.

The leaf-cutter is
very like an ordinary
bee to look at and the
bees to be seen at the
end of the rains
buzzing about the
wood work of our

78

IN THE GARDEN.

verandahs are, many of them, the leaf-
cutters searching for a suitable site for
house building. Having determined on
a site, the bee now sets to work on its
leaf-cutting operations. The hole or
tunnel selected has to be thoroughly lined
with leaf sections and these are cut circu-
lar, elongate, or semi-circular, according
as to whether they are required to form
the bottom or top or sides of the cell. So
true is the cutting of these pieces that they
have all the appearance of having been
stamped out with a die, and the instinct
which enables the little bee to accomplish
this work and to fit the pieces in the
tunnel is nothing short of marvellous.

Each little cell when made, consists of
several circular or oval pieces at the
bottom with semi-circular ones for the
sides and several circular ones to fit
over the top in the form of a cap above.
Before these latter are placed in posi-
tion, the cell is about half filled with
pollen and an egg laid in it : for the cell

79

INSECT INTRUDERS.

is the future home of the grub which
will hatch out from the egg and the
pollen forms the store of food provided
for it. By the time this store is ex-
hausted, the grub will have become full
grown and will pupate, to issue as a
bee the following season. One tunnel
may contain five or six of such cells
end to end, each lined and capped, and
containing a portion of pollen and an
egg. The mouth of the tunnel is finally
closed with a little mud, when the work
of house-building and egg-laying will
be complete.

The reason for lining the tunnel with
moist green leaves is to prevent the food
with which it is provided — pollen brought
from the flowers in the garden — from
being absorbed or from drying up too
quickly. That insects should have reached
this knowledge and have developed an
instinct enabling them to counteract this
drawback is wonderful, but the precision
and dexterity of the leaf-cutting business
80

IN THE GARDEN.

is ajmost incredible. The rapidity with
which the bee, with its mandibles, cuts
out the section, itself meanwhile hang-
ing on to the piece which is severed so
that, as the last snip is given, it
half falls, half flies away with
it in its legs ; the skill with
which it rolls the pieces into
tubes and pushes them down
the tunnel ; the exactness with
which it cuts the final circular
pieces just to fit the orifice, all
are wonderful.

If you want a lesson in
dexterity or patience or to
observe for yourself one of
the almost incredible things
Nature's Store-house has to
show, track the leaf-cutter bee
from the rose bush or M ussaenda
shrub in your compound to her
building site in the verandah
and watch the various stages in
her building operations.
81

INSECT INTRUDERS.

Curious are the superstitions which
have become attached to insects and
surely amongst the most curious is that
which attaches to the Earwig, the insect
so commonly associated with the dahlia
at home. It has been hated throughout
generations and credited throughout
generations with climbing up into the
human ear, living there and producing
deafness. How the superstition ever
arose it is difficult to imagine, since it
is probable that the wax in the ear is
a sufficient protection for it and would
soon suffocate an insect ; for the latter
breathes through openings situated down
each side of the body and these would
soon become clogged up.

The most wonderful part of the earwig
is the marvellous manner in which the
under wings, which are ear-shaped, are
folded up. The upper ones are quite
short and scale-like in these insects, and
consequently the under ones have to be
']) fjL 5L most complexly folded beneath them.

82

IN THE GARDEN.

The»neatness and dexterity of this folding
is one of the most curious and beautiful
things in the insect world, the wings
when opened out being as large or larger
than the insect itself.

Earwigs are very active, fast-running
little insects, some of whom are carnivo-
rous and others eat portions of plants
and commit damage in the garden.
Some of the smaller species appear to be
greatly attracted by light and make
their appearance in our rooms and on
our dining tables at night. You will
find that these insects are also often intro-
duced into the house from the garden
with the cut flowers for the table, in the
corollas and calyces of which they were
lying perdu when the flowers were
picked.

I have dealt with some of the above
ground pests of our plants and alluded
to a few of their insect foes.

Let us now go below soil and see what
the lower portions of our favourites have
83 .,

INSECT INTRUDERS.

to contend with. The point is of
importance since we have so often to
bewail lost seedlings or, even worse,
seed patches, whole sowings disappearing
without our having the faintest idea of
where they have gone to. It is not
always the much maligned mail's fault.

I remember one morning whilst potter-
ing about the garden imagining I was
gardening, hearing a tragic and tearful
voice saying —

" Oh, dear, do come here. Some nasty
thing has eaten off some of my best
white lupins ! "

It was the Girl's first year in the
country and her first experience of The
Gardener's Trials in the East. I hastened
to the spot revolving in my mind the
various Satanic pests who might be the
cause of the note of tragedy in a voice
where nothing tragic should ever be.

It was as I had surmised ! The young
seedlings were cut down just above the
soil and left lying on the spot, though a
84

IN THE GARDEN.

few had been dragged away to a distance.
Following carefully the direction of these
seedlings and searching closely around,
the home of the aggressor was soon
discovered, a round orifice in the soil
leading down to depths below, the
opening disguised by some small weeds.

A cunning brute this insect, and
amongst one of the worst, for he is one
of the Crickets — those pests of the garden
and field which, feeding upon young
plants, are capable of committing such
serious mischief when present in any
numbers. Fetch a spade and trace the
opening downwards and you will find a
gallery or tunnel projecting downwards
into the soil inclined at an angle with
several zig-zags in it. Some 2 — 3 feet
down the tunnel ends in an enlargement
in which scraps of plants may be found ;
or portions of seedlings may be dis-
covered in the tunnel itself or projecting
from the orifice at the top, dragged there
by the cricket to feed on at leisure.

85

INSECT INTRUDERS,

The enlargement at the bottom of
the tunnel is where the insect spends
the day, two or three occupying it
together whilst young, but only a
male and female when the insects
have matured, i.e., when they have
acquired their wings.

The young cricket starts life as a
little ' hopper ' not unlike the young
grass-hopper or locust ' hopper ' and you
will notice that he is then wingless. As
he grows in size, he sheds his skin at
intervals, his wings begin to appear and
increase in size at each moult till they
are finally full-sized and functional as
flying organs. During the whole of his
life the cricket lives in tunnels in the
earth in the manner above described,
issuing forth at night, or in the day time
in dull cloudy weather, and feeding on
young plants. The insects are most
wasteful feeders and will cut down num-
bers of young plants in the way we
found the white lupins cut down, eating
86

.IN THE GARDEN.

but* a small portion of one or two of
them.

Perhaps, the most commonly danger-
ous garden cricket in India is the large
smoky brown brute which is distributed
throughout the country. It is a large
thick insect about i>£"in length when full
grown. This cricket, both in the young
and adult stage, is insatiable and the
amount of young growth it will destroy is
almost unbelievable. Rows of seedlings
will be cut down and destroyed in a single
night by a colony of these pests, living
either in tunnels made in the soft seed
beds themselves or more probably in
some neighbouring sandy patch of
soil covered with weeds or low jungle.

It is not sufficient, remember, to look
for the habitations of these insects in the
seed beds alone ! If there, you will see
the orifices. If not, careful search must
be made for them even if the search is
carried for a radius of 50 or 100 yards
from the scene of the depredations.

87

INSECT INTRUDERS.

This large cricket is a powerful brute
when full grown, and the hoppers
even in their younger stages are
hardy little beggars and will hop a
long distance in search of succulent
seedlings, amongst which they prob-
ably place our young annuals high up
in their Menu of tasty delicacies. The
smoky brown cricket is not the only pest
of this nature we have. There is a com-
mon little black chap, very plentiful in
the country and perhaps more addicted
to fields and cultivated tracts than to the
garden. It is an easily recognized insect.

Another pest of this jat is the little
Mole Cricket which resembles our
English insect and lives very much in
the same manner, destroying roots by
his burrowing proclivities. He is also
carnivorous, and the male is addicted,
when he gets the chance, to devouring
his offspring.

Have you ever closely inspected this
curious little animal ? He is more like a
88

IN THE GARDEN*

cross between a lobster and a crab than
i

an insect ; his front legs are flattened
out into broad curved saw-edged digging
instruments, the front part of his body
alone looks like the top shell of the
lobster, whilst the wings, instead of
being placed flat against the back and
sides, are rolled up on either side exactly
as you would roll up an umbrella.
Truly, a quaint little beggar and as
malicious and harmful as quaint.

There is yet another cricket mon-
strosity, or rather it resembles a cricket
although it is really of the grasshopper
tribe, and I cannot refrain from breaking
my rule and giving its Latin name, as
the latter is as monstrous as is the
appearance of the insect itself, to wit—

SCHIZODACTYLUS MONSTRUOSUS ! ! !

Did you ever hear and have you ever
tried to pronounce such a mouthful
before ?

This is the largest of the three and
goes by the name of ' bherwa ' in the
89

INSECT INTRUDERS.

Indigo districts of the country and
elsewhere. It is almost as 'much a
curiosity in its way as the mole cricket
and is built on a tre-
mendously powerful
scale, its legs being
strong and long and
very powerful, and the
head and body broad
and thick. The most
curious part about the
anatomy of the insect,
however, are the tremendously long
wings. So long are these that if held
straight behind it when in the position
of rest, they would project a long way
beyond the extremity of the body. In
order to get rid of such awkward
appendages and to ensure their safety,
for they are membranous ^and frail, the
insect rolls them up in a spiral manner
and you see at the end of its body two
large spiral coils generally coiled up
in a careless slovenly manner. The
90

IN THE GARDEN.

appearance these dishevelled coils give
to the insect is indescribable, but he is
never forgotten once met with.

This pest resembles the large smoky
brown cricket in the amount of damage it
is capable of committing amongst young
plants. I have seen lines and rows of
young seedlings cut down and destroyed
in a night by the ' bherwa ' and he is an
insect very rightly dreaded by planters,
agriculturists and gardeners of all sorts.

These three samples of what the cricket
world is like and how many live will be
sufficient, I think, to put one on one's
guard against all the villainous tribe.

It may be asked — How is one to pre-
vent or get rid of their attacks ? Some
place portions of young seedlings of,
say, some common vegetable in the
neighbourhood of their pet seedling beds
in order to attract the crickets and pre-
serve their seedlings in the beds. If the
branches are poisoned, by dipping in lead
arsenate (a white powder, ilb. of which

INSECT INTRUDERS

should be mixed with 100 gallons of water
to make the mixture) or some other
poisonous mixture, a number of crickets
may be got rid of by this means. It has
to be tried sometimes when the crickets
visit the garden at night from some neigh-
bouring tracts of jungle in which it is
hopeless to expect to be able to find their
holes.

If, however, the crickets are living in
the garden in some sandy tract of soil, or
in the seed beds, the best way is to put on
a chokra to hunt them up. Give him a pot
of water and a small bag and tell him to
pour a little water down each hole he
finds. The crickets will at once run up
to the surface in a terrible fright at the
sudden inundation, and they can then be
caught and killed and placed in the bag.
It is absolutely essential to make the
youngster produce his * bag ' and to pay
him only per head of the ' kill,' or you will
find that the crickets will increase instead
of decrease in the compound or nursery.
92

IN THE GARDEN.

We have not yet done with our
unwelcome nocturnal guests of the,
garden and must now turn to the beetles
who number amongst their ranks some
grubs which vie with the crickets in their
capabilities for destruction. These grubs,
however, confine themselves to the soil
and are not to be found at work above
ground.

Most people who garden in the true
sense of the term, t.e., who do the actual
work of sowing and pricking out, etc.,
themselves, will have come across in the
course of their operations curved white
grubs with yellowish brown heads, 3
pairs of short legs on the front portion
of the body following the head and with
the hinder part of the body swollen up
into a curious kind of bag arrangement.
These grubs often prove themselves an
unmitigated curse in the garden, as
they feed upon and destroy the roots
of young and old plants and cut down
seedlings. They are the larval form of

93

INSECT INTRUDERS.

Cockchafer beetles, those brownish or
yellow beetles of square bulky build
which often fly into our houses at night
and go booming1 about the room after
the fashion of the scavenger beetles.

The cockchafer beetles themselves
mostly feed upon leaves and are by no
means so important to the gardener as
the grub. The latter spends its whole
existence in this stage in the soil and,
when full grown, changes into a pupa
or nymph in the earth without forming
any special covering or^cocoon round it.
This nymph gradually assumes the shape
and colouring of the beetle and often,
in turning over the soil in the spring and
summer, one can find all stages of the
insect-grub, nymph and beetle, in the
soil amongst the roots of plants.

The best way for the amateur gardener
to get rid of these pests is by deep
trenching the soil during the winter
season and exposing grubs and pupas to
the cold which will kill them. Digging

94

IN THE GARDEN.

in lime is a good plan to get rid o
them, but it is necessary to leave the
beds so treated fallow through a rains
in order to get the lime washed out,
as it will of course kill all vegetation as
well as insects.

Another pest similar to the cockchafer
one is the grub of the well-known Rhino-
ceros beetle, the pest of the date and
palmyra and other palms in India.
This insect is more particularly to be
found in those parts of the country where
palms flourish, and here it can become
a real terror.

I have seen Calcutta gardens in which
whole seed beds have been destroyed by
the grub of this insect, and on the East
Coast of Madras it commits serious havoc
in young Casuarina nurseries, let alone
the enormous damage it does to the palm
groves.

The grub is a large one, some
2^ inches in length when full grown,
and probably spends some 8 — 10 months

95

INSECT INTRUDERS.

in this stage, feeding all the time upon
roots and young seedlings in a manner
similar to the cockchafer grubs. The
beetle lays its eggs usually in refuse
or dying or rotten palm trees and the
grubs hatch out in these positions.

It is a common sight to see a heap of
decaying refuse in the corner of a garden
in this country. The malis like to make
their soil in this manner. If the heap
is kept in a deep pit, there may possibly
be little to be said against it. If, how-
ever, it is stacked in some corner above
ground, it is certain that the rhinoceros
grubs will spread from it to the seedling
beds and commit irreparable damage.
This I have often seen in Calcutta
gardens and down in parts of the East
Coast of Madras as well.

This rhinoceros beetle is, as I have
said, a pest of palms in the country, as
the beetle eats down through the heart
of the crown of the palm, cutting large
holes through the young folded leaves

IN THE GARDEN.

which, on subsequently opening, have a
most tattered appearance. When several
beetles attack a tree in this way, the tree
may die.

Cleanliness in the plantation is the
secret of dealing with this beetle. All
refuse should be burnt and dying trees
and dead trees should be cut out and, if
badly infested with the pest, should be cut
up and burnt. Remedial measures of this
nature of course require to be carried
out throughout all the gardens of a
locality to be really effectual. If a
garden is properly cleared of the pest, it
will not of course be so subject to its
attacks as will a dirty, ill-kept one ;
but if the insect is allowed to increase
in large numbers in neighbouring dirty
gardens it is of course hopeless to expect
to keep it entirely out of, and therefore
from damaging, the well-kept garden.

We have not quite finished with the
root-eating grubs. There is a little
brown, elongate, very hard and shining
97

INSECT INTRUDERS.

grub from J4 to i inch in length,
thin and like a little piece of seg-
mented copper wire. This insect
from its appearance is known in
England as the ' Wire Worm ' and
it acts much in the same way as
the cockchafer, living entirely in
the soil and cutting through and
feeding upon the roots of seedlings
and young plants.

The damage done by the root-
eating pests is usually visible above
soil owing to the fact that the
young plants commence to flag,
and if pulled by the head come
away, when they are seen to possess
no roots. Careful digging round
the area will probably disclose cock-
chafer or 'wire worm ' grubs or
the common noctuid A gratis moth
grub to be described shortly.

The ' wire worm ' grub, when full fed,
pupates in the soil, forming no special
covering, and the nymph eventually
98

IN THE GARDEN.

changes into that small elongate, brown
o'r grey beetle known as the * Click' beetle
or * Skip Jack' owing to the fact that
when the insect is on its back, it jumps
up into the air to get over on to its legs
again. This movement is necessary
owing to the beetle having been pro-
vided by nature with extremely short
legs which will not reach the ground
when the insect is on its back. The
beetle is thus quite unable to get into
its normal position again in the manner
usually adopted by insects of giving a
heave or shove off on one side so as to
right the ship.

To enable our click beetle to resume
its normal position, nature has provided
him on the underside with a little socket
at the top of the body into which fits a
little spiny projection from the thorax
or head portion. When on its back the
insect pushes up its chest so that it rests
on the end of its head and tip of its body ;
this position releases the spine from
99

INSECT INTRUDERS.

the socket with a considerable amount
of force which projects the insect up into
the air ; when in the air, it turns over and
comes down to earth again right side up.

The last of the common soil pests
which are to be usually met and
dealt with is the smoky curved grub
known as the 'Cut- Worm,' about an inch
in length, which is often dug up at the
roots of plants and sometimes waxes in
great force in the garden. This grub is
really the caterpillar of a moth with dull
smoky brown wings, and it can be
recognized as a caterpillar owing to
the fact that it will be seen to possess
16 legs in eight pairs, whilst none
of the grubs we have already considered
possess more than three pairs of legs.
The insect passes through at least two
generations in the year ; that is, the
moths are to be found on the wing in
the garden at least twice a year.

The grub feeds for some two months
on young plants, cutting them through
100

IN THE GARDEN.

neaj the base, from which it gets
its popular name of the * cut-worm.'
It drags cut-off seedlings down its
burrow in the soil in a manner similar
to that we have seen the large cricket
doing, portions of the plant often pro-
jecting from the mouth of the tunnels.
When full fed it builds a little earthen cell
in the soil and changes into a red brown
chrysalis in this. About 2 — 3 weeks
are spent in this stage and the moth
pushes its way up through the light
layer of soil which is all that separates
the chrysalis chamber from the surface
and escapes into the garden to mate and
lay eggs on the soil near some young
seedlings. The winter is spent in the
grub stage in an earthen cocoon and
deep trenching of the soil and exposing
these hibernating grubs to the air will be
sufficient to kill them off at this season.

White Ants are of course as much a
curse and a plague in the garden as
they prove themselves in the house ;
101

.INSECT INTRUDERS.

f-

that is, from the gardener's point of view
when he is not the owner of the house !
The termites infest our well-drained beds
and destroy the plants above ground
by eating off the succulent bark, having
run up on its outer surface their usual
covered way galleries. Or they attack
our growing plants below ground.

In the Dun White Ants have, for
some reason as yet not understood and
certainly not appreciated by our garden-
ers, a strong partiality for the
Annual Chrysanthemum, and
it is apparently a common
experience to find young plants
lying on the beds cut off in
the manner shown here. Our
mail's device, which is effec-
tual to a certain extent in the
case of some plants, is to
water the beds with a solution of copper
sulphate.

Destruction of this nature is suffici-
ently annoying to the gardener, but our
102

IN THE GARDEN.

friend's efforts to arouse the latter's ire
do not stop at his plants ! They go for
his labels as well ! !

You will have often found the bases
of your stakes supporting pet plants, and
your wooden labels, carefully marking
the sites of choice bulbs and seeds, eaten
through as shown here. It is the work
of friend * white ant, ' and he loves above
all things the soft ' deal ' wood of our
English packing cases.

In a similar manner of course this
creature makes match wood of the posts
supporting summer houses, pergolas,
jafferey work of all kinds, etc. Inaword,
the White Ant is a perfect curse and I am
seriously thinking of indenting on the
most hard-up Railway Company I can
find for old rails to settle once and for
all the ever cropping-up question of the
pergola posts.

The Girl, with a grim determination
to be even with the Fiend, as she terms
him, and a reprehensibly reckless
103

11

INSECT INTRUDERS.

disregard of the cost of a furlough trip,
has already indented largely for the
latest thing in aluminium labels from
Home !

I fancy these will puzzle our friend ! !

104

IN CA/AF

?N \V

^,

^>f^%::-\

MOST of us have some ac- ~" ^t^
quaintance with India's
Jungles, and to those who have not, I
can but say go and visit them. For are
not those glorious outings in the wild
tangles of Hindustan — far far from the
abodes of man — amongst the chief of the
pleasures which make one's exile and
pilgrimage in this Eastern Land possible
through the long dreary months of duty?
And delightful for the brief periods of
leisure and freedom when, casting away
official routine and the restraints of social
105

. i\* '<»]

%

s\',

V

INSECT INTRUDERS.

intercourse and amenities, one turns one's
face with relief to the fastness of the
jungle.

Here we find Insect Life in its purest
untrammelled freedom. If we wish to
meet those curiosities and freaks which
abound in the Insect World, it is to
jungle bug life that we must turn. In the
jungles we come at once face to face with
some of the most marvellous creatures
Nature has to show ; for no other class of
the Animal Kingdom includes even a
tithe of the weird forms of life which
can be counted amongst our friends the
Bug Tribe of the Jungles.

Take the types depicted here ! Surely
relics of a prehistoric age when the
Icthyosaurian swam in slimy tenebrian
pools and the Pterosaur, flapping
heavily through giant carboniferous
forests, carried with him the secret of
aerial flight — that still unsolved problem
of the acutest intelligencies of our much-
vaunted present-day civilization !
106

IN CAMP.

Curious as
th6 Mantis or
Praying In-
sects are,
their present
appea ranee
has most pro-
bably been attained by an adaptation of
parts through a continuous series of minute
changes in order to enable them to obtain
their prey, which consists chiefly of other
insects, with the greatest facility. They
are cumbersome and heavy on the wing.
Some in fact are wingless. Therefore it
will not be on the wing that the means of
subsistence will be sought. The insects
have evidently discovered that by acquir-
ing the colouring of their surroundings
and by developing a mode of progression
which is at the same time as slow as old
Time itself and yet as rapid as the light-
ning flash, lay their best chance of secur-
ing their prey. This the family have suc-
ceeded in doing in a most marked degree.
107

INSECT INTRUDERS.

As regards colouring the forms which
live on trees or amongst rocks are of that
peculiar smoky brown or grey which is
par excellence the most difficult to ' spot'
when the insect is quiescent — almost
impossible in fact save to a highly trained
and observant eye. And yet some of the
smaller tree forms are often met with
in camp especially at al fresco lunches
in the jungle where one may often see
an intruder or two (such as the small
one shown enlarged) on the snowy table
cloth, his protective colouring here mak-
ing him all the more visible.

Again, the foliage dwelling forms have
acquired that peculiar vivid tint of green
with perhaps yellowish and brown mark-
ings which enables them to lie perdu on
leaf or green twig till some unwary insect
approaches within their reach ; finally,
there are other vivid and beautifully
coloured banded or spotted species which
are usually found amongst flowers, such
as the one here shown on the Canna
108

IN CAMP.

flower, which are usually only noticed
when they betray their presence by some
sudden movement made in fear or to
seize their prey.

It has been said that their
movements are very slow
and yet may vie in speed
with the lightning flash.
Have you ever watched a
mantis shikaring ? Only the
hind two pairs of legs are
used for progression. On
them he heaves over very
very slowly so that the
movement is scarce percep-
tible, and then, just as his
centre of gravity is nearly
lost, out shoots a leg like a
lightning flash. It is diffi-
cult to see the movement,
but the change of position
of the leg effectually proves
it to have been made. An-
other gradual heaving over
109

INSECT INTRUDERS.

of the whole body and another lightning-
like movement of a leg. And so the ad-
vance is made step by step until the prey
is within reaching grasp of the terrible
forelegs. A movement which it is impos-
sible to analyse, it is so rapid, and
the prey is seen struggling helplessly
in a grasp from which there is no
escape.

Have you ever inspected these forelegs
of the praying insect? You will see
that two long joints are so placed that
they fold up one on the other. Each of
them is furnished with sharp spiky teeth
or spines, set backwards, which fit one
into the other. The position in which
these legs are held is one of supplication,
but that prayer is wholly concerned with
affairs mundane,
for once they get
within seizing dis- ^
tance, the attitude
of supplication
disappears and one
no

IN CAMP.

of fierce and ruthless power takes its
place.

The method of feeding is not pretty
and is certainly rough on the captured.
In fact, one's only hope for the latter is
that its sufferings are soon over, and the
knowledge that the nerves and sensitive
masses of insects are not as delicate
as our own. Having secured his feast,
the mantis sits well back on his hind-
legs and proceeds methodically and
slowly to tear it to pieces without troub-
ling to administer any preliminary coup
de grace ; in fact, he will only feed upon
a quivering and palpitating mass, and
in this differs from many of his con-
freres of the mammal class.

The utter callousness displayed by
this insect is of the most cold-blooded
order. I have seen a mantis who hap-
pened to dine uninvited with me one
evening in camp, after satisfying his
appetite, seize and maim and throw away
insect after insect apparently merely in
in

INSECT INTRUDERS.

sport or to keep his hand in. He never
attempted to eat them or to kill them
outright, the crippled creatures hobbling
away as fast as they could the moment
they reached the table cloth. Now and
then he missed his prey and this seemed
to incite his choler. In the callous con-
tempt of his attitude to the lesser insect
life crawling and fluttering around him
on the white cloth, he reminded me of
nothing so much as one of Walter Scott's
lordly Feudal Barons of the Dark Ages.
Some of the mantises simulate flowers.
In the year 1877 Dr. J. Anderson
showed to the members of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal a most curious mantis
(shown here half natural size) from the
neighbourhood of Midnapur in Bengal
whose under surface has the appearance
of the corolla of a pink papilionaceous
flower. The position usually taken up
by this insect is to hang head downwards
amongst green foliage, either motionless
or swaying gently as if blown by the

112

IN CAMP.

wind. The purpose of the mantis is
clear. The similarity to a flower attracts
insects, apparently chiefly flies, on the
search for honey. Alighting with this
object in view, if indeed the fly is ever
permitted to alight, lo and behold the
flower is in full and active motion and
the drop scene closes down on the life
of that unwary fly !

The female mantis lays her eggs in a
curious manner. You may have seen
attached to twigs or grass stems in the
jungle filmy, frothy, foamy masses of a
delicate green or yellow colouring
looking like an elongated lump of
coagulated soap suds. The mass is
very soft and can be easily crumbled
between the fingers. This is the egg
case of the mantis. She lays her
eggs in a frothy mass which takes this
shape and dries and hardens sufficiently
in the air to retain it. The little mantises
on hatching out dropout of the egg case
which by then has dried and shrunk to

INSECT INTRUDERS.

such an extent that it contains numerous
little holes and crevices.

Unlike the mantis the Stick and Leaf
Insects do not often visit the abodes of
man. It is on our jungle forays that we
shall find them in their haunts if we keep
our eyes open. During the silent wait
for a beat whilst we have nothing to do
but, watch and examine the forest or tall
grass around us, our eye is suddenly
attracted by an apparently moving piece
of stick or length of yellow grass stalk.

We watch. All is still. And yet we
are prepared to swear there was a
movement of some kind. We watch and
wait and look and wait, and at last there
is another movement. We gently stir
up the grass or jungle with our rifle
muzzle, for we are interested. A sudden
short rush never very far rewards us.
The insect in its fright detaches itself
from the jungle to which it is clinging,
and there we see a piece of stick or straw
on the move !

114

IN CAMP.

Wonderfully similar is it in shape,
looks and colouring to its environment.
A close examination scarcely enables
our unaccustomed eye to distinguish
eyes or head or mouth; Which is the
headend? Only a movement discloses
it and the position of the legs for we
now see the front pair forward ly directed
and the two hindermost pairs pointing
backwards as shown on the grass stem
at the head of this Chapter. A wonder-
ful adaptation of nature and not acquired
to enable the insect to drop upon its
unwary prey, for these peculiar beings
are herbaceous feeders and defoliate trees
and plants.

There is a record that the cocoanut
palms in Fiji and the Friendly Islands
have at times been completely defoliated
by one of these brutes, the inhabitants,
who largely depend on these trees for
their subsistence, being left to starve.

Fancy a famine brought about by stick
insects ! We wonder what the little
"5

INSECT INTRUDERS,

Tin Gods (my caligraphy is none of the
best unfortunately and my typist trans-
posed these last words into ' Tree Grubs' !)
seated on the Olympian Heights would
say when faced by such a conundrum.
Those numerous and bulky tomes — yclept
the Famine Reports and Guides and
Rules for Guidance — are silent as to what
should be done !

We think the Bengali Babu would have
some reason in such a case for a wire to
the effect * Lakri kiras in fields. Please
wire steps to do.' The Junior Secretariat
Walla would be put to it !

Of all sizes are these curious insects,
from half an inch or less to the Assam
one shown on the next page, of 8 inches
in length.

By the way the stick folk are cleverer
than man in one respect. If they lose
a leg they are able to grow another in its
place ! What glorious risks one could
take if one could do ditto and had six
legs to play about with ! !
116

IN CAMP.

The Leaf Insects are no less a source
of keen interest to naturalists than their
confreres of the sticks. That the great
ingenuity and trouble they have been
at through countless generations of
Darwinian minute transformations and
adaptations to arrive at their similitude
to leaves is most marvellous and praise-
worthy who can deny ! And you may
be tempted to ask why ! Why has
such tremendous trouble been taken ?
The reason in the case of the Stick
and Leaf Insects is of course entirely
one of self- protect ion. They feed out
in the open on trees and plants where,
but for their wonderful protective devices
in copying their surroundings, they
would be quickly snapped up by birds or
parasitised by insect foes.

The world famous Leaf Insect, the
PhylHiim shown overleaf, closely resem-
bles in appearance and colouring a leaf
or one might say parts of several leaves.
You will notice that even the legs are
117

INSECT INTRUDERS.

modified to look like portions of leaves,
whilst the body and wings are quite flat-
tened out and leaf-like. Man with all his
cleverness and adaptability in living at
ease and in comparative leisure and
comfort upon his fellows has done noth-
ing yet half as clever for his own self-
protection as the leaf insect.

By the way while on district
work in Eastern Bengal some
years ago a native brought me
one of these insects. On insti-
tuting a few enquiries as to where
I might procure some more, I
was told that the trees were fairly
common in those parts, and that
this particular one was only one of the
leaves which had taken to walking! I
fancy most of us in Eastern Bengal and
Assam have been told this simple yarn at
one time or another— there is little doubt
that the native believes it.

There are tree-living forms of both
Crickets and Cockroaches which, as a
118

IN CAMP.

means of protection and possibly in some
instances with a view to obtaining their
food, have taken on colourings and mark-
ings which give them a wonderful resem-
blance to the bark upon which they
reside and run about. All who have been
out in the jungles or even those whose
jungle lore is confined to that assimilated
in the garden will have noticed these
insects. One curious point about them
that I have observed is that they are
usually adorned with a tremendously
long pair of feelers as in the young cricket
shown here. The feelers in many insects
are supposed to be used as smelling and
sensitive organs, but why they should be
so exceptionally long as is the case in these
forms is open to considerable surmise.

Whilst talking of tree insects we must
not forget one of the best known, and at
the same time the least known (to use an
Irishism) of them all in India. I refer to
the tree Cicada, that most curious insect
who, in order to assert his charms in
119

INSECT INTRUDERS.

the bosom of the fair female, produces
that loud and often discordant whirring
sound which in the minds of many Anglo-
Indians is probably pleasingly associated
with and reminiscent of the ' Hills.' It
is all very well for those safely ensconced
on the hill tops to anathematise the noisy
wooing of this strange creature. But
how many of us sweltering down in the
scorching plains station have sighed for
and longed to hear again that familiar
whirr, precursor in our minds to the
glorious coolness that is approaching
with our climb up the ' Hill. '

I would not here be understood to say
that the cicada is solely a hill insect.
Every hot-weather shikari knows better !
In the hot Terai forests at the foot of
the hills he is, or some species of him
are, at home and singing through the
long hot weather and rains. Other
brilliant green brothers are to be found
at the same period in that Paradise
of the Sportsman, the great Goalpara

1 20

IN CAMP.

grass jungles, and elsewhere in the plains
of 'India. But the insects are perhaps
mostly addicted to forest and to the foot
hills and neighbouring mountains.

Only the male cicada sings. His
spouse is dumb ! This blissful domestic
fact was known even to the ancients of
old, for a Greek poet wrote —

Happy the Cicadas' lives

For they all have voiceless Wives ! !

Have you ever heard anything on the
subject of the life history of these queer
insects ? It is as peculiar as is their
appearance.

The whole of the young or wingless
stage is passed in the earth, the insect
having the appearance shown here.
The grub probably feeds at this period
on the roots of trees, but we know little
about our Indian species.

I have noted, however, that the young
of the common cicada of the Terai Sal
forests live in the soil and feed upon
the roots of this tree.
121

INSECT INTRUDERS.

What is perhaps even more peculiar
than the food eaten is the fact that some
species are known to live for several years
in the soil feeding in this manner, the
period being the same for any given spe-
cies. For instance, the Americans have
what they term the ly-year cicada, the
mature insect appearingon thewingabove
ground only once during this interval.

The grub moults its skin several times
in the soil and then just before the last
moult leaves the soil and crawls up the
nearest tree trunk (see p. 121) or tall
grass stem. The insect then sheds its
last skin, i.e., the last skin splits up at the
head end and the now mature winged
cicada, shown in the figure on page 120,
crawls out and soon commences its weird
song to attract a mate.

You will doubtless have often seen
the last empty nymph skins on tree trunks
(p. 121) and have wondered what they
were, for they are to be found plentifully
on trees affected by cicadas.
122

IN CAMP.

At all times of the year, but more
especially whilst on shooting or fishing
excursions, the shikari will have noticed
the presence of the ubiquitous Grass-
hopper and Locust. He is perhaps to be
seen at his best in India during the rainy
season, for in the enervating damp
heat when the jungle is at its rankest,
numbers of different forms are to be
found of all sizes and shapes, with at
times queer hoods over their heads and
often of the most vivid colouring.

The young locust and grasshopper
usually resembles the parent exactly save
that he has no wings ;
or they are but slight
outgrowths lying on his
back, which increase in
size with each moult of
his skin. Some of the
young however differ con-
siderably from the parent,
the head and the thorax (the part behind
the head) being greatly enlarged, and at
123

INSECT INTRUDERS.

times corrugated and ridged and painted
with the most brilliant of red and orange
or yellow pigments.

Almost diabolically wicked is the
aspect some of these creatures present as
they cling to the stem of a tall succulent
grass and glare out at you from their
glassy cold fishy eyes, as in the case of
the beauty shown overleaf. Often have
I thrilled coldly all down the spine as
one of these appalling apparitions has
suddenly, at the end of some fabulous
leap, alighted on the green sleeve of my
shikar coat in the hopes of finding a
most delectable feeding ground.

Another common insect of the forest
in my part of India which has simulated
leaves as a method of protection is the red
brown Kallima or Leaf Butterfly. Many
of my readers who have any acquaintance
with the jungles will have noticed at
times an insect resembling in its method
of flight a moth more than a butterfly.
It gets up suddenly at one's feet, one sees
124

IN CAMP.

a momentary flash of colour, orange and
purple amidst a dark red brown, as the
insect takes a sort of dashing swerving
flight for a short distance and then sud-
denly dives to rest either on the ground
or on the lower part of the trunk of some
tree.

If one is curious, one makes for the
spot and searches carefully about, but
only dead leaves on the ground and the
bases of the stems of the trees are to be
seen. Suddenly at our very feet up
rises the same glance of colour and the
shadow insect makes another dash and
goes to ground. If one is lucky, one
may at last perceive a slight movement
amongst the leaves as the butterfly closes
down its upper wings on to the lower.
All one sees is what appears to be a
dead leaf with a short leaf stalk to
it. A close inspection shows that the leaf
has the ordinary vein markings and
that it is apparently dry and dead but
not shrivelled ; it is apparently lying
125

INSECT INTRUDERS.

slightly inclined for the insect always
rests in this position. The colour of the
under wings may vary slightly, some
being more greyish than others and the
vein marks may vary slightly. The
similarity to a leaf is however always
perfect.

If the insect is caught and killed and
the wings opened out (in a position of
rest the wings of one side are always held
flat against those of the other so that the
upper sides are invisible) it will be seen
that there are central orange and red
patches of bright colour amidst the red
brown, and it is these patches of brilliant
colour that one sees when the insect
suddenly rises in flight, opening out its
wings to do so.
Surely this insect
must be included
amongst Nature's
most marvellous
adaptations for pro-
tective purposes !
126

IN CAMP.

Sriikaring friends have often question-
ed me on the subject of a curious insect
or animal of sorts, they have rarely been
quite certain where it came in the Zoo-
logical kingdom or even if it belonged
there at all, which has the appear-
ance of a mass of cotton wool on
twigs and leaves of low jungle scrub ;
for it is generally found in such
places. One does not expect to find
masses of white cotton wool in
jungles remote from the vicinity of >
the abodes of men and it is this
anomaly which usually attracts
attention to this insect — for insect
it is.

Many have found
that if the wool is
disturbed it hops or
jumps and the sight
may be witnessed of the cot-
tony mass rapidly separating
in a series of leaps in all
directions !

127

INSECT INTRUDERS.

This insect belongs to the tribe of true
Bugs, and it is one of the insects termed
Frog-hoppers. It is only the young
bugs that have these long cottony
filaments sticking out of their backs
and as they are gregarious in habits
and feed together the cottony mass is
thereby explained. This insect is decep-
tive in more ways than one since its adult
or grown up form has ill-fitting green
wings and looks like a moth (p. 127).

You will have often come across a kind
of Dragon-fly-looking insect which is
very common during the rains in
Northern India, and is perhaps as much
an intruder in the bungalow
at head-quarters as out in
camp since it is often attract-
ed into the house by light.
It has four large gauzy wings
spotted with black and can
be distinguished by its short
body from the dragon-flies,
which never enter the bungalow or very
128

IN CAMP.

rarely since they are day-flying insects
preying upon other species of their class ;
and also by the fact that it does not
possess their enormous head consisting
almost entirely of two large eyes.

This intruder is the * Ant Lion,' a
frequenter of our English lanes. Not
much of the lion about him you will say,
and correctly so ; for the winged insect is
harmless enough and only annoying
from the fact that his awkward ungainly
flight often brings him into one's face as
he undertakes unwieldy aerial move-
ments in the lighted room. He acquires
his carnivorous name owing
to the ferocious appearance
and predatory habits of the
grub or larva.

Have you ever noticed on
a sandy path, in a sandy dry
nullah or in sandy patches of
the verandah of a much worn
and dilapidated rest-house
little inverted, cone-shaped
129

INSECT INTRUDERS.

holes or depressions made in the loose
sand. If you examine them you will
see that the orifice at the top is per-
fectly circular about i ^ to 2 inches
across with loose shelving edges, and
that this opening trends inwards all
round to a point at the bottom, the depth
being about an inch and a half.

A casual inspection will not show you
the architect of this beautiful little trap,
but if you watch it for some time you may
see an unwary insect running along the
ground, approach too near the hole,
slip over the shelving edge without being
able to stop himself and fall to the
bottom. With an insect's quick instinct
to escape from danger he at once com-
mences to endeavour to climb up the sides,
but the treacherous sand gives beneath
his feet and he drops to the bottom.

Watch the bottom and you will sud-
denly see a commotion in the sand and
the intruder seized in a formidable pair of
pincers. These belong to the gentleman
130

IN CAMP.

sho\\n here enlarged, the ' ant lion ' grub.
He is the constructor of this ingenious
trap, and having built it, he secretes him-
self at the bottom with only his pincers
or jaws protruding out at the pointed
bottom of the little pitas shown on p. 129.
After seizing his struggling prey, he
makes an incision into its anatomy and
sucks it dry and then again buries himself
at the bottom of his parlour and patiently
awaits what a kind fortune and his own
clever handiwork will send him.

The Animal Kingdom is made up of
two great groups of animals, the preda-
tory animals, and the preyed upon. In
the Insect World, as we have already
seen, this also holds good as the old
popular jingle has it —

Greater bugs have lesser bugs,
And so ad iiifinitum.

It is too big a subject to enter on here,
but it is worth while depicting types of
two common predaceous groups met
with in the jungles.

INSECT INTRUDERS.

The large black carnivorous Beetle
with the six white spots is common
throughout the country and feeds
probably on a variety of insect food, not
despising young locusts when this
pernicious pest is out on its great forays
through the country.

The other one is one of the Tiger
Beetles, those brilliantly metallic colour-
ed little insects which are often met run-
ning rapidly along the forest rides or fly-
ing in short swift flights in front of one.
Difficult to catch are they, and probably
amongst the most actively carnivorous
of all insects, their brilliant metallic
colouring and rapid active movements
doubtless greatly aiding them in their
continual predatory forays on their
insect relatives.

It is perhaps almost superfluous to
mention here that curse of the tropics
the termite or * White Ant. '

No true ant is he, though having the
appearance of one and possessing many
132

IN CAMP.

of the habits and
customs of the true
ant. As we all know
the termite, or I had
better say some ter-
mites, for there are
many species and
they live in various
ways, construct
those large earthen
mounds which we see
so commonly when
on our jungle forays
in the forests
throughout the
country. Wonder-
ful erections are
these and they
extend in ramify-
ing tunnels and
chambers as deep
into the eartli or
to a greater depth
than the portion

133

INSECT INTRUDERS.

of the habitation reared above the
surface.

Of all the numerous jungle pests which
appear to have been created specially
to annoy the shikar-loving Anglo-Indian
commend me to the Red Ant and the
Big Bee for two of the worst.

The Red Ant we have always with us
in camp anywhere below the higher
altitudes to be found on the great
Himalayan chain and a few other moun-
tain ridges scattered about the country.
Under canvas as in the hoivdah or in the
machan or at the al fresco lunch under a
shady tree he is a particularly irritating
and intrusive customer. Rarely is he
willing to let you alone if you have
intruded into what he is pleased to
consider his domain, and the area of
this latter is somewhat comprehensive !
And when he means business, as we
have all found out, it is time for us to
leave and that in a manner more hurried
than dignified !

'34

IN CAMP.

As* is well known, this notorious and
vicious ant inhabits trees and makes a
nest of leaves which it fastens together
in a most ingenious manner. The
adult ant possesses no material with
which to fix up the leaves, but the
immature ant or larva (as E. E. Green of
Ceylon has shown) has glands which
secrete a sticky substance and the adult
ants make use of the grub much as we use
a gum bottle. Several ants hold the
leaves together whilst others, each seizing
a grub and holding it between their man-
dibles as depicted in the enlarged figure
here, use it as a kind of animated gum
bottle to wet with its sticky material the
edges of the leaves, which are then press-
ed together by the ants holding them.

It is in this manner that those nests,
consisting of a mass of stuck together
green and dead sal leaves (similar to the
one shown on a reduced scale on the next
page) which are to be seen so commonly
in sal forest and elsewhere, are made. If

135

INSECT INTRUDERS.

we examine them, they are seen to be hum-
ming with red ant lifeand woe betide the un-
lucky shikari who unwarily
brushes againstone when out
on an elephant. Literally in
a twinkling he will be cover-
ed with the brutes all intent
on rinding the softest por-
tions of his anatomy to bite
with as vicious a nip as
they can possibly manage.
Little short of a hurried strip
will get rid of them then.

The red ant is pretty well
an omnivorous feeder and
will carry away any and
every scrap of refuse you
throw away during a tiffin
in the jungle. He is a
gentleman whose room is ever
to be desired to his company,
and I would strongly recommend
the tyro in jungle matters to always
bear him in mind.

IN CAMP.

tDon't lay out lunch or sit down to it
in his close neighbourhood.

Don't run into his nest when out on
an elephant in the forest on shikar or
any other intent.

Don't, when waiting for a beat, lean
against a tree trunk without first care-
fully scrutinizing it to see whether or no
there is a column or two of these vicious
brutes retiring up into or descending
from a nest in the branches. These are
golden rules, each purchased by painful
experience, which I would wish others
to possess without paying for.

And yet even this ant has its uses,
curious as it may seem. In Kanara and
some other parts of India and throughout
Burma and Siam a paste is made of him
which is eaten as a condiment with curry !
Surely after this there should be no
more famines in India ! !

Have you ever noticed lines of Black
Ants solemnly walking up the stem
of a tree or plant whilst others are

INSECT INTRUDERS.

descending — all apparently equally in
a great hurry ?

You may have noticed such, and
curiosity may have stimulated you to
carry your investigations further to
endeavour to find out where these ants
were going and what they were going
for. At the top of the plant or shrub
stem, for in the case of a big tree your
curiosity would have perforce to take
a rest unless you happen to be a climb-
ing enthusiast, you may have found
flowers and fruits or leaves and buds
only, but you may have noticed that
the stem or leaves or fruits were wet
and sticky and that clustered round
them or on them were tiny green,
brown or black insects. These are our
friends the Blights or Aphis again
with which we made acquaintance in
the garden.

These little insects as we have seen
feed on the sweet sugary sap of the tree
drawing it in through the proboscis-like
138

IN CAMP.

mouth and exuding it or passing it out
at the other end of the body. They
spend their lives doing this and are little
more than animated siphons.

Now ants, as we all know, are extremely
fond of sugar, and those members of the
community who are not addicted to occu-
pying with us our homes and helping
themselves from our sugar basins or
dessert dishes, but live out in the jungles
as all decent insects should have perforce
to search for this commodity elsewhere.
And the blights provide it in abundance
not only in the manner above described
by exuding sugary excretions on to stem
and leaf of the plant they are infesting,
but also in another way.

If you examine the blight here depicted
enlarged you will see that it has two little
processes sticking up out of its back.
These are two little tubes connected with
the interior of the body, and if the latter is
pressed from outside a little sugary liquid
exudes from these tubes. The ant walks
139

INSKCT INTRUDERS.

up to an aphis from
behind and with his
feelers drums on the
back of the insect, thus
causing some sugary
liquid to rise up and
overflow from the little
tubes. This he then
proceeds to suck up and
repeats the operation
until he is either satis-
fied or the aphis runs
dry for the moment,
when he seeks out
another.

The process you will
perceive is very much
like our own method
of milking the cow.
And indeed some com-
munities of ants keep certain species of
these blights in their nests, feeding them
and milking them after the manner we
keep and make use of cows and goats.
140

IN CAMP.

I %have often %
wondered what
happens to the
enormous quan-
tity of seed which

adorns the large spikes of the tall
elephant grass which clothes such a large
area of the jungles of India ; and whose
tall elegant white feathered heads, pro-
jecting upwards so gracefully from the
brilliant green drooping tufts of foliage,
give to the jungles at the close of the
rains the appearance of a giant garden.

Recently, whilst sitting on a ride await-
ing patiently for a beat to commence, my
attention was attracted to a large com-
pany of what have been termed the
Granary Ants owing to their habit of
storing up grain against hard times in
the winter. The grain is either taken
into the interior of the nest or it is heaped
up into a pile at the entrance door.

Opinions are diversified as to what
the ants do with this store, and it is
141

INSECT INTRUDERS.

probable that the method of extracting
food from the seeds varies with different
species. Some probably feed on the
saccharine matters contained in the seeds,
whilst others, many of those probably
who heap the grain at their entrance
door, allow the mass to ferment and feed
upon the sugary matters contained in the
fermented grain.

Whilst awaiting the aforesaid beat I
noticed that most of the individuals of
the company of ants previously alluded
to were carrying one of the seeds of the
tall elephant grass apiece. Rarely have
I seen anything so curious as the sight
presented by the hurrying and scurrying
mass of small black ants, each about a
third of an inch in length, with a big
head and strong jaws in which the seed
was tightly clutched, its silvery feathery
tuft waving aloft in the air. The task of
carrying this seed was no light one as
its feathery appendage caught in every
little blade of grass or piece of stick or
142

IN CAMP.

other obstruction met with and then had
to b'e hauled away by sheer force ; also
two ants meeting would almost invari-
ably brush the tufts against each other
when they would cling together like wax,
the deuce of a tug-of-war being the
result.

During the half hour I watched these
serious minded little chaps at their
laborious task (Why is it there appear to
be no slackers or unemployed amongst the
worker ants ? Have they reached a higher
civilization than our own ? ) I calculated
roughly that I had seen the entire crop
of seed of several of the giant grass
heads pass before my eyes in the tightly
closed grip of these industrious little
creatures. A goodly store they must lay
up at this rate, but then they have four
months of a severe winter to pass
through in these northern parts of India.

Some days later I happened to observe
a couple of double rows of this same
ant streaming across an open space near
*43

INSECT INTRUDERS.

the rest-house. On following the black
stream for a short distance I came upon
a small bare broken patch of earth with
several small openings and cracks in it,
the total width of the broken area being
about four inches. Down these openings
and cracks my little friends, carrying
the grass seeds brought from a consid-
erable distance, for the nearest grass
jungle was a good hundred yards off,
were disappearing in a continuous stream
whilst fresh relays of workers were is-
suing and hurrying back along that black
stream.

With a pointed stick I carefully dug
down on one side of this nest and found
that the openings outside led to a system
of ramifying tunnels, some leading to
oval chambers only about an inch below
the surface whilst others went down
much deeper into larger chambers.
Some of the smaller ones near the upper
surface I found filled with a store of seed
whilst other seed had been taken down
144

IN CAMP.

belo\x into the chambers in the interior
where the real nest was apparently
situated.

I alluded to the Big Indian Bee above.
Few shikaris amongst us have not at one
time or the other had a far too intimate
acquaintance with this insect to be like-
ly to ever forget him.

This bee lives in big
nests which are often at-
tached to the branches of
large trees, I mean trees
possessing a tall cylindrical
columnar stem surmounted
by a few main stout horizon-
tal branches such as one
sees in the common
cotton tree (Bom-
bax). These are
favourite building
sites for the big
bee and to the
under side of the
horizontal branches

INSECT INTRUDERS.

the semi-elliptical combs of as much as
5 feet in length and 2^ feet in width are
affixed. Attimes, however, and especially
is this often the case in Northern Indian
jungles, you will find the nest attached to
a low bough in a dense thorny thicket.
Or the bees build in rocks and cliffs as in
the famous case of the Marble Rocks near
Jubbulpore. or affix the combs to build-
ings as in the case of the Taj at Agra, or
in caves as at Ajanta off Bombay.

The nest contains three forms — the
males or drones who do no work, the
females who lay the eggs and the
workers, who build the giant nests con-
sisting of a double row of hexagonal cells
placed end to end horizontally, which are
either filled with honey or wax or pollen
or are tenanted by the grubs or pupae
which subsequently become workers or
males or females according as they are
fed.

These great colonies are perma-
nent, i.e., they do not die out at the close
146

IN CAMP.

of the season, the formation of a new
colony taking place by ' swarming. '
This swarming of bees is not a nuptial
flight as is so usually supposed. The
swarm consists of one female and a
number of workers. It is these swarms
which at times make their appearance in
our gardens and take up a position in
some large tree or, worse still, endeavour
to construct their nest in the eaves of
the house. On no account should the
latter proceeding be tolerated as they
make the place uninhabitable.

They should be smoked out at once and
before they have established themselves.

The nest of the big bee is quite different
in appearance and shape from that of the
common large Indian Hornet, an insect
which also requires respectful attention
from man owing to its nasty sting.

You will remember to have seen large
whitish cardboard-like masses several
feet in length, looking like gigantic
eggs placed high up out of reach in the

'47

INSECT INTRUDERS.

branches of trees. These are the nests
of a big hornet and they are inhabited
by a large number of individuals.
In the figure showing one of these
nests the outer envelope, which con-
sists of a kind of papier mache made
of chewed materials by the wasp, is
partially removed. Beneath the combs
are exposed. These combs are hori-
zontal, not vertical as in bees, the cells
thus being vertical. The
combs are arranged in layers
like the stories of a house,
each story being supported
by little columns as can be
seen in the figure.

Wonderfully orderly is
this beautifully constructed
home of the hornet, but if
occupied it requires to be
approached with care or,
better still, be given a wide
berth ! But to return to
our bee.

IN CAiMP.

The%Big Bee can be recognized by its
size and elongate body. Its sting is very
poisonous, being -most deadly in the
hot weather ; and when the blood is in bad
condition is not unlikely to cause the
death of Europeans if badly stung.
That this is not the case with the jungle
tribes of the country appears certain, as
the writer has seen Kols and Santals with
many stings in their bodies, but apparent-
ly suffering no inconvenience therefrom.

This bee is very difficult to dislodge,
as it will return again and again to a
chosen site, thereby greatly injuring
buildings. Arches in the beautiful Taj
Mahal at Agra were atone time greatly
disfigured by the combs of this insect.

The following interesting note by
Major T. R. A. G. Montgomery on the
nuisance and damage committed by this
bee at the Ajanta Caves appeared in the
Pioneer some time ago : —

" The Collector of Khandeish has
written to warn visitors to Ajanta of the
149

INSECT INTRUDERS.

danger caused by bees. These indus-
trious and vindictive insects appear
to be as dangerous* now as they were
in 1877 when Mr. Burgess, the
Archaeologist, " was dreadfully stung
and had to remain in the river for hours
up to his chin in water." So important
was the matter formerly considered that
in the 1879 edition of Murray's Handbook,
travellers to India are recommended to
supply themselves, as part of their outfit,
with " a pair of stout leather gauntlets
coming up above the wrist half-way to
the elbow, and a light wire-mask with a
back-piece to protect the back of the head
and neck, " for use when visiting the
caves of Ellora and Ajanta as a protection
against the bees, " many persons having
been so badly stung that in some cases
death has ensued. " In the same guide-
book we read as follows : — " Having
located himself, the traveller will do well
to send for Imam, the great bee-hunter of
Ajanta, and enquire in what state the
150

IN CAMP.

bees are. If likely to be troublesome,
Imam will arrange for their destruction
before the caves are visited. "

"Apart, however, from the danger to
those visiting what Murray describes as
41 the most extraordinary sight that India
has to show, " there is another fact I
would like to bring forward, namely, that
the bees are one of the chief causes of
damage to the famous wall paintings in
the caves. In Messrs. Ferguson and
Burgess's book on the Cave Temples of
India it is stated that "forty years ago
(i.e.) about 1839) the paintings at Ajanta
were very tolerably complete and their
colours exhibited a freshness which was
wonderful, considering their exposure
to the vicissitudes of an Indian climate
for from 15 to 18 centuries. Since that
time, however, bees, bats and barbarians
have done a great deal to obliterate what
was then so nearly perfect. "

" As the State protection of the remains
of ancient India is now about to pass into

INSECT INTRUDERS.

law, might I suggest to the authorities
that a small portion of the money that will
soon beannually allotted for the purpose of
preservation be devoted to the eviction of
the bees of the Ajanta caves ? This would
simply mean a trifling amount spent in
wages to Imam, the bee-hunter, if he is
still alive and active or to his successors
if he is dead. It is not every day or in
every country that one can see paintings
seventeen hundred years old, and it
will be indeed a pity if the present oppor-
tunity be not taken for establishing the
periodical ejection of the bees and bats
of Ajanta, on the two-fold grounds of
preserving the paintings and ensuring
the safety of sight-seers ; while as for the
* barbarians ' they will soon have
become creatures of the past."

The Anglo-Indian shikari might, by
the way, think over the tip of the iron
mask and leather gauntlets !!

The big bee appears to be common all
over the country and goes up to over
152

IN CAMP.

7,000 feet in the Himalaya. When
disturbed, it will attack both man and
beast with the utmost fierceness.

Many are the stories extant in this
connection and some of them exceeding-
ly ludicrous Two men were resting
between beats one hot May morning in a
Central India jungle. One of them un-
warily lit a pipe. Overhead spread the
crown of a tall cotton tree with a dozen
great combs of the big bee attached to
its branches. In the hot weather he is
particularly vicious and vindictive, and
resenting this intrusion he was down on
that twain in a twinkling.

It was an utter rout and the elder of the
two, a respected bald-headed Colonel of
H. M.'s British Regiment of Foot, led the
retreat, which had no strategy about it.
They 4 did time' towards the open country
a mile and ahalf distantandevery now and
then the Colonel would take off his topi,
which unfortunately had a ventilating
space round the inside asthe bees soon dis-

'53

INSECT INTRUDERS.

covered, and frantically beat his bald pate
which the insects had found out as a
particularly suitable spot for attention !
When the bees finally left them, the
Colonel had to all appearances suddenly
grown a stiff crop of bristles all over his
poll and it took a lot of attention, profane
language and ointment to get rid of all
those bee stings.

The healthiness of those two men and
the nearness of the open country saved
them from worse consequences than a few
days' absolute disfigurement, a lucky
escape which was not accorded to a young
half-grown tiger which had been captured
one day in a tiger drive and was being
carried up in a cage by coolies to a head-
quarters station in the Hills. Suddenly
the bees descended, the coolies bolted,
and that wretched tiger was stung to
death on the road.

••*-• «*,

Crown 410, cloth, 800 pages. 305. net. Rs. 20.

INDIAN INSECT LIFE.

BY H.iMAXWELL LEFROY, M.A., F.E.S., F.Z.S.,
» Entomologist, Imperial Department of Agriculture for India.

[Published under the Authority of the Government of India.]

With 70 Full-page Coloured Plates, 15 Plain Plates and 500 other
Illustrations in the Text.

This volume is the first
single comprehensive work
on the Insects of India.

For each family a gene-
ral account of structure,
sex distinction, life-his-
tory, habits, food and
economic importance is
given, followed by the
number of species, refer-
ences to all important
systematic works and an

account of those species of which anything definite is known. Every important
paper is referred to and the complete literature of Indian Insects summarised.

In the Introduction, and in "Interludes" at appropriate places, general
biological topics are discussed under such headings as "Insects and Man,"
"Where Insects Live," "Cosmopolitan Insects," " How Insects Protect Them-
selves," etc. The Diptera, as well as the bloodsucking insects, are dealt with
by F. M. Hewlett, Second Imperial Entomologist.

The book is invaluable alike to the specialist, to the entomologist in India
and to the amateur who is interested in the abundant insect world around him.

Crown 8vo, cloth. 6s. Rs. 4-8.

A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL;

BY E. H. AITKEN.

Illustrated with 80 Drawings.

By R. A. STERNDALE, F.R.G.S,

" It is one of the most interesting
Books upon Natural History that we
have read for a long time. It is never
dull, and yet solid information is con-
veyed by nearly every page." —

Daily Chronicle.

TH ACKER, SP1NK & CO., CALCUTTA.

Crown 8vo, cloth. 6s. Rs. 4-8.

THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER.

BY E. H. AITKEN.
With 50 Illustrations by F. C. MACRAE.

In these and the following charming essays on Natural History "Eha"
revealed a remarkable fund of delicate humour with which he invested almost
every common incident and simple phenomenon of human and animal life
in India.

" Delightful book

may he live to give us
another such." —

Chambers' Journal.

"This is a delightful
book irresistibly funny in
description and Illustra-
tion, but full of genuine

science too

There is not a dull or
uninstructive page in the
whole book." —

Knowledge.

Their mamma brings them out to see the world.

Crown 8vo, cloth. 65. Rs. 4-8.

BEHIND THE BUNGALOW.

BY E. H. AITKEN.
With 53 Illustrations by F. C. MACRAE.

As The Tribes on My Frontier graphically and humorously described the
Animal Surroundings of an Indian Bungalow, the present work portrays with
much pleasantry the Human Officials
thereof, with their peculiarities, idio-
syncrasies, and, to the European,
strange methods of duty.

" These sketches may have an
educational purpose beyond that of
mere amusement ; they show through
all their fun a keen observation of
native character and a just appre-
ciation of \\.n—The World.

" Anglo-Indians will see how
truthful are these sketches. People
who know nothing about India will
delight in the clever drawings and

the truly humorous descriptions The Tribes on my Frontier was good,

Behind the Bungalow is even better."— The Graphic.

" A L'ttle Islope.'

THACKER, SPINK & CO., CALCUTTA.

Royal 8vo, 300 pages, hatf-morocco, gilt top. £2-2. Rs. 36-12.

THE INDIAN DUCKS AND THEIR ALLIES,

By E. C. STUART BAKER, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.

The 30 Coloured Plates are reproduced by chromolithograpby, under the
supervision of the well-known bird-artist,

Mr. HENRIK GRONVOLD.

The only book on the Game Birds of India with Coloured Illustrations
noiv in print %

Fourth Edition. Super-royal 8vo, cloth gilt, 338 pages. 145. net. Rs. 12-4.

GAME, SHORE, AND WATER BIRDS
OF INDIA.

With additional references to their allied species in other parts

of the world.
By COLONEL A. LE MESSURIER, C.I.E., F.Z.S., F.G.S.

With 1 80 natural size Illustrations from actual specimens,

A Vade Mecum for the Sportsman, embracing all the Birds at all

likely to be met with on a Shooting Excursion.

" Colonel Le Messurier writes as a field naturalist for field naturalists and
sportsmen without any great pretensions to scientific knowledge, but there is no
doubt that all naturalists will gain useful hints from this little volume, which
is profusely illustrated with woodcuts giving the characteristic features of most
of the species." — Nature.

" Excellent in method and arrangement, and as far as we have been able
to test it, rigidly accurate in details, Colonel Le Messurier's book should become
the Vade Mecum of every sportsman and naturalist whom duty or pleasure
may compel to visit India."— Kn<Kijled%e.

THACKER, SPINK. & CO., CALCUTTA.

Crown 8vo, paper cover. 2s. 6d. Re. 1-12.

THE BIRDS OF CALCUTTA.

BY FRANK FINN, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.
With Illustrations by HERBERT GOODCHILD.

A series of short
humorous, but faithful
descriptions of the
Common Birds of
Calcutta.

"Mr. Finn tells us in
a very sprightly and
amusing way everything
that is worth knowing
about the birds to be
observed in the com-
pounds of Calcutta and
the neighbourhood." —
Englishman.

"Mr. Finn has a
vivacious style which re-
moves his work from the ' dry-as-dust" category." — Nature.

" There is a good deal of bird life to be observed in and around Calcutta, to
which Mr. Finn's little book will serve as a useful guide, especially as it has
some Illustrations by Mr; Herbert Goodchild."— Field.

- Small 410, paper boards. 55. net. Rs. 3-8.

GARDEN AND AVIARY BIRDS^OF INDIA.

A HANDBOOK FOR FIELD

NATURALISTS AND BIRD

FANCIERS. )

BY

FRANK FINN, B.A., F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.

Giving a complete description

of 100 birds, with" 7 Plates,

illustrating- 31 different

species.

" From the pretty little honey-
sucker up to the impertinent crow
every possible pet for an Indian
Aviary is described and pictured." —
Indian Planters' Gazelle.

"The Bird-Lover*,' Vade Mecum."
— Indian Field.

TH ACKER, SPINK & CO., CALCUTTA.

Imperial i6mo, cloth, 580 pp. 6s. net. Fs, 4-8.

A NATURAL HISTORY OF

THE MAMMALIA OF INDIA, BURMAH

AND CEYLON.

By R. A. STERNDALE, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S.
With 170 Illustrations by the Author.

"It is the very model of what a
popular natural history should be."—
Knowledge.

"The book will, no doubt, be
specially useful to the sportsman,
and indeed has been extended so
as to include all territories likely to
be reached by the sportsman from
India."— The Times.

"Has contrived to hit a happy
mean between the stiff sc:entific
treatise and the bosh of what may
be called anecdotal zoology." — The
Daily News.

Post 8vo, cloth. 2s. 6d. net. Rf. 2-4.

SEONEE ;

OR,

CAMP LIFE ON THE SATPURA RANGE.

A Tale of Indian Adventure.
By R. A. STERNDALE, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S.

With Illustrations by the Author.

A narrative of life and sport in the jungles and highlands of India, and an
admirable treatise on animal life in India artistically disguised, which has won
for it a great popularity with readers both young and old.

Demy 8vo, cloth. 6s. net. Rs. 4-8.

ANIMALS OF NO IMPORTANCE.

By DOUGLAS DEWAR, F.Z.S., i.c.s.

A BOOK DEALING WITH THE

COMMON BIRDS AND BEASTS OF

INDIAN DAILY LIFE.

" We may commend the work as an excellent
example of ' Nature-teaching,' and at the same
time as showing how the enforced tedium and
confinement of Indian hot weather life may be
mitigated by the intelligent observation of the
ways of the uninvited denizens of the bunga-
low and its immediate surroundings." — Nature.

"A chatty anecdote book, showing a sense
of human and kindly insight."— Academy and
Literature.

" The reader will easily fall under the sway
of the writer's charms." — Englishman.

THACKER, SP1NK & CO., CALCUTTA.

Third Edition. Demy 410. 36 Plates and Map. ^i-iJ. net. Rs. t5<-l2.

LARGE GAME SHOOTING

IN THIBET, THE HIMALAYAS,

NORTHERN AND CENTRAL"

INDIA.

BY BRIG,-GENEKAI.
ALEX. A. A. KINLOCH.

" Colonel Kinloch, who has^killed
most kinds of Indian game, small
and great, relates incidents of
his varied sporting experiences in
chapters which are each descriptive
of a different animal. . The photo-
gravures of the heads of many of
the animals, from the grand gaur,
popularly miscalled the bison, down-
wards are extremely clever and
spirited."— Times.

" This 'splendidly illustrated record
of sport. . . The photogravures,
especially the heads 'of the various
antelopes, are life-like ; and the letterpress is very pleasant reading." — Graphic.

Second Edition. Demy 8vo, cloth. los. 6d. Rs. 7-14.

BULLET AND SHOT.

IN INDIAN FOREST PLAIN

AND HILL.

With Hints to Beginners in
Indian Shooting.

BY C. E. M. RUSSELL,

Ba.r.-at-Law of the Inner Temple,

late Senior Deputy Consewator

of Forests, Mysore Service,

"We have nothing but praise
for his accuracy and for the value
of his practical advice. . . .
Not a few of the chapters are
very attractive reading, being full
of exciting anecdote and picturesque reminiscences. . . . His chapters on
forest campaigning, camp equipment, and sporting batteries deserve careful
attention." — Saturday Review.

"... Cannot fail to appeal to sportsmen of every standing, from the
veriest tyro, to whom it will prove particularly useful, to the oldest hand at the
game. . . . The general excellence and completeness of the book should
ensure it the position of a standard work." — Civil and Military Gazette.

THACKER, SPINK & CO., CALCUTTA.

Third Edition. Demy Svc-, cloth. Illustrated. 15.5. Rs. 11-4.

THE ROD IN INDIA:

BEING HINTS HOW TO OBTAIN SPORT, WITH REMARKS ON
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF FISH AND THEIR CULTURE.
By H. S. THOMAS, F.L.s. (Madras Civil Service, Retired),
Author of " Tank Angling in India."

Field. — "A masterly treatise on the art of angling."
Second Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth. 55. net. Rs. 4-6.

DOGS FOR HOT CLIMATES.

A Guide for Residents in Tropical Climates as to suitable Breeds, their
respective Uses, Management, and Doctoring.

By VERO SHAW and Captain M. H. HAYES.
Enlarged and brought up to date by W. S. BURKE,

Late Editor of " The Indian Field."
With 24 Illustrations from Photographs.

;A book which all lovers of Dogs should have on their shelves." — Rangoon Gazette.

THACKER, SPINK & CO., CALCUTTA.

Crown 8vo, cloth. 6s. Rs. 4 8.

LAYS OF IND.

By ALIPH CHEEM.
COMICAL, SATIRICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE.

With over 50 Illustrations.

" This is a remarkably bright little
book. In a few of the poems the jokes,
turning on local names and customs, are
somewhat esoteric ; but taken throughout,
the verses are characterised by high animal
spirits, great cleverness, and most excellent
fooling."— The World.

" One can readily imagine the merriment
created round the camp fire by the reci-
tation of ' The Two Thumpers,' which is
irresistibly droll." — Liverpool Mercury.

Crown 8vo, cloth. 6s. Rs. 4-8.

TWENTY-ONE DAYS IN INDIA:

BEING THE TOUR OF SIR AL1 BABA, K.C.R.

By GEORGE ABERIGH MACKAY.
With 13 Full-page Illustrations.

This is the most famous satire ever written
on Indian Society and Social Life. The Edition
is complete, being an exact transcript of the
original copy, and containing all the Illustra-
tions which were specially drawn for the more
expensive Edition.

" The scores of letters to ' Vanity Fair,'
which created such a sensation in India some
years ago, have maintained their popularity in
a fashion which their cleverness thoroughly
deserves." — Land and Water.

THACKER, SPINK & CO., CALCUTTA.

RETURN ENTOMOLOGY LIBRARY

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