s the wood is tender and susceptible to the action of
their powerful mandibles.

The black beetle makes its attacks when fully mature, eating its way
into the soft tissues and generally selecting the axil of a young
leaf as the point of least resistance. Others simply deposit their
eggs, which hatch out, and the resulting grub is provided with jaws
powerful enough to do the same mischief. Two or three of these grubs,
if undisturbed, are sufficient in time to completely riddle the
growing tip, which then falls over and the tree necessarily dies.

REMEDIES.

Remedies may be described as preventive and aggressive, and, by an
active campaign of precaution, many subsequent remedial applications
can be avoided.

Most of the beetles attacking the palm are known to select heaps of
decomposing rubbish and manure as their favorite (if not necessary)
breeding places, and it is obviously of importance to break up and
destroy such; nor can any better or more advantageous way of effecting
this be suggested than by promptly spreading and plowing under all such
accumulations as fast as they are made; or, if this be impracticable,
by forking or turning over or otherwise disturbing the heaps, until
convenient to dispose of them as first suggested.

A truly preventive and simple remedy, and one that I can commend as a
result of close observation, is the application of a handful or two
of sharp, coarse, clean sand in the axillae of the young leaves. The
native practice is to mix this with ashes, salt, or tobacco dust;
but it is questionable if the efficacy of the remedy lies so much in
these additions as in the purely mechanical effect of the sand, the
constant attrition of which can not be other than highly objectionable
to the insect while burrowing.

Of offensive remedies, probing with a stout hooked wire is the only
form of warfare carried on in these Islands; but, as the channel of the
borer is sometimes tortuous and deep, this is not always effective. A
certain, simple, and easily applied remedy may be found in carbon
bisulphid. It could be applied in the holes (which invariably trend
downward) with a small metal syringe. The hole should be sealed
immediately with a pinch of stiff, moist clay.

It is likely that this remedy and probing with a wire are the only
successful ways of combatting the red beetle, whose grub strikes in
wherever it finds a soft spot; but, for these species which attack
the axils of the leave