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.