CHAPTER XX.

WHITE ANTS, CRICKETS, AND BLIGHT.

These insects (for blight, too, is said to be an insect) are very destructive to the Tea plants. The cricket, however, only injures it when quite young, so we will consider that little pest first.

When Tea seed germinates, and the young seedling is 2 or 3 inches high, the cricket delights to cut the stem and carry, or try to carry, the two or three green leaves attached to the upper part into its hole. Even after seedlings are planted out, if the stems are slender, it cuts them. To the young seedlings, in nurseries or planted “at stake,” they often do great harm, killing in some places one-third or so.

It is much easier to prevent their ravages in nurseries than in this latter case, simply because the spot in which they must be sought and destroyed is circumscribed in the one, almost unlimited in the other.

Only one thing can be done. Employ boys (they soon get clever enough at the work) to hunt for their holes and dig them out. The holes are minute, but run down a long way. The only plan to follow them is to put in a thin pliable stick and remove the soil along it. On getting to the bottom of the stick, if it is not the bottom of the hole, you repeat the operation till you _do_ get to the bottom, and there you will generally find the cricket.

Early in the morning they can be often found and caught outside their holes. The boys employed should be paid for them by the number they catch. They can be placed alive and brought to the factory in a hollow bamboo, and then killed in some merciful way.

When once a Tea plant has got a stem as thick as a thick pencil no cricket can hurt it.

They are much worse in some places than others, and in my experience I have found them worse on low lands.

The white ant is a much more formidable enemy than the cricket. They _do_ (as all planters know) attack and destroy living bushes.[28] Whether they first attack some small dead portion or not is a question, but practically it does not signify the least, for if they do they manage to find such in about one-third of the trees in a garden. Beginning with the minute dead part they kill ahead of them as they go, and will, eventually, in many cases, if left alone, kill the largest trees.

They have a formidable enemy in the small black ant which exists in myriads, and kills the white ant whenever the latter is not protected by the earthen tunnels he constructs. In many places so great is the pest that, did this small black ant not exist, I believe no Tea Garden could stand.

From the close of the rains to the cold weather is the worst time for white ants, and the time the planter should guard particularly against their ravages. At that time if he examines his trees closely he will very likely find white ants on a quarter of the whole.

Digging round the plant where they are disturbs their runs and does much good. At the same time they should be brushed off any part of the tree they have attacked, and the tree should be well shaken.

All this, however, only does temporary good, for they often are found as thick as ever on the plant a week later.

Tobacco water is beneficial, but in wet weather it is soon washed off.

Kerosene oil is _very_ efficient. A little is put round the stem, but it is expensive. The next best thing I know is the earth oil (petroleum) from Burmah, and this is cheap enough. It is thick, but used from a bottle it gets heated by the sun and is then quite limpid.

When white ants are found on a tree, a little with a small brush is put on the part they have attacked. They are also well shaken off, and a ring of oil is placed round the stem. My experience is that they will not attack that tree again for a long time. I was at first fearful that both it and the kerosene (the one, I believe, is only a manufacture of the other) would injure the trees, but both are safe. I strongly recommend others to try it, if they doubt, on a small spot only in the first instance.

Whatever is used, or whatever is done, white ants must not be left to work their will in the autumn. All the trees should then be examined once at least, and once again, if possible, the following spring.

Blight (a serious matter, I hear, in Cachar) I know but little of. I do not remember hearing anything about it when I was there, now some fourteen years ago. It is rare in the Chittagong district, but I have seen one or two trees attacked with it. Under its influence the young leaves get covered with brown spots and shrivel. It is most destructive to the yield of a garden.

From one or two experiments made I believe pruning off all the diseased branches, and scraping back the soil for a space of 2 feet round the stem, so as almost to lay the roots bare, will be found beneficial, but I do not speak with certainty.

All the Himalayan gardens are free from these three pests detailed, except that occasionally a few crickets have been seen.

FOOTNOTE:

[28] A long controversy on this point lately took place in the papers; that is to say, the point discussed was, whether white ants do or do not attack living tea trees.