Part I

., Cicadidae,” compiled by Distant; in this a number of alterations in the earlier classification are made, as indicated in his recent contributions on this family in “The Annals and Magazine of Natural History” 1900–1906. He places them in three distinct sub-families which are subdivided into seventeen smaller divisions. Many of our species are now placed in other genera.

The sub-family CICADINAE contains many of our largest and most striking species. Its members have the front edge of the basal abdominal segment on each side produced forward in a leaf-like expansion, which more or less covers the sound organs.

The genus _Thopha_ contains two very fine species: _Thopha saccata_, “The Double Drummer,” takes its popular name from the great size of the opercula projecting on the sides of the thorax. It is a reddish brown cicada, its wings marked with brown and black, and it measures 5 inches across the outspread wings; it lives in open forest country; has a loud, distinct note; and ranges from South Australia to Brisbane. _Thopha sessiliba_ is a somewhat smaller but brighter-coloured species ranging northward along the Queensland coast from Townsville, and is found in Central Australia at Tennant’s Creek.

[Illustration: =Fig. 154.=--_Thopha saccata_ (Fabr.).

The large Cicada called by the children “The Double Drummer.”

(“Agricultural Gazette,” N.S.W.)]

The Genus _Arunta_ was formed by Distant to contain two Australian species, of which _Cicada perulata_ described by Guérin is the type. It is a handsome insect, 4 inches across the wings; is of a reddish brown tint mottled with lighter colours; the wings are unspotted; and the male can be easily recognised by the large white frosted opercula. It is not a very common species; it is taken sometimes about Sydney.

The next division contains three genera typical of Australian species. The Genus _Cyclochila_ until lately contained a single species, but Distant has lately described a second from N. Queensland. _Cyclochila australasiae_ is our common large green cicada, called by the children the “Green Monday.” The whole insect is rich green, the colour extending into the nervures of the tegmina; there is a yellow variety not so common, called in consequence the “Yellow Monday”: I have counted as many as 40 of these fine insects resting on the trunk of a small oak-tree in my garden in the early morning.

The Genus _Psaltoda_ contains 7 species peculiar to Australia. _Psaltoda moerens_, our common black cicada, is called the “Red Eye” by the Sydney boys on account of the bright colour of the ocelli. It measures over 4 inches across the wings, which are mottled with black on the tegmina, and marked with the same colour on the wings. It frequents the smooth white-stemmed gum trees, and ranges from Brisbane, Queensland to Adelaide, South Australia, and is also found in Tasmania. _P. harrisi_ is a smaller and somewhat variable form both in size and colour; it varies from black to brown and even dull green; the wings are very slightly mottled, and it can be easily distinguished from the “Red Eye” by the more distinct silvery patch on the sides of the body.

[Illustration: =Fig. 155.=--_Psaltoda (cicada) moerens_ (Germer).

The Common Black Cicada or “Red Eye.”]

The members of the Genus _Henicopsaltria_, four in number, are also peculiar to this country. _Henicopsaltria eydouxi_, one of our commonest species, frequents the trunks of the rough-barked gum trees; I have counted over 300 on a single tree on the coast near Gosford, N.S.W. It measures nearly 5 inches across the wings; is of a general mottled light brown and chestnut colour, with the wings infuscated with three zig-zag bands of brown; the opercula are orange red. _H. fullo_, peculiar to W. Australia, is a very distinctive blackish coloured species measuring about 3 inches across the wings; it can be easily identified by its banded wings and the dorsal surface of the abdomen ornamented with a transverse white band about the centre of the body. The Genus _Macrotristria_ now contains 7 species; most of these were originally described in the Genus _Cicada_, and have representatives in all parts of Australia, two coming from W. Australia, and two richly-coloured green species from the tropical forests of N. Queensland, while _Macrotristria angularis_, our common, large, dark brown species, variegated with light yellowish spots on the head and thorax and with deeply infuscated wings, ranges from Adelaide, S.A., to Queensland.

The Sub-family GAENINAE contains a number of South American and Asiatic cicadas, among them some with very brightly coloured wings. Two members of the Genus _Tettigia_ are found in North Queensland and North Australia, both of which were once placed in the genus _Tibicen_; while _Tettigia tristigma_ is the type of the Genus _Tamasa_. The handsome black and yellow mottled _Gaeana maculata_, common in India and China, has been recorded by White from Australia, and Goding and I had specimens from the Northern Territory of S. Australia, but Distant does not notice this record.

The Sub-family TIBICININAE have the front edge of the basal abdominal segment straight, not produced forward; and the sound organs are entirely uncovered. _Venustria superba_ is a curious ferruginous insect with rich coppery tints upon the tegmina and wings, which comes from North Queensland. Dodd usually collected it in the neighbourhood of termite nests.

[Illustration: =Fig. 156.=--_Henicopsaltria eydouxi_ (Guérin).

The Mottled Grey Cicada.

(“Agricultural Gazette,” N.S.W.)]

The Genus _Abricta_ now includes most of our species previously placed in the Genus _Tibicen_; thirteen are listed from Australia. _Abricta curvicosta_, one of the largest, measures about 4 inches across the wings; is reddish brown with a pale stripe down the centre of the prothorax, and three black spots on each of the tegmina. It is one of the common species about Sydney, N.S.W., in midsummer, and is called the “Floury Miller” on account of the silvery pubescence covering the body which makes it look as if it had been dusted with flour. _A. aurata_ ranges from Tasmania and Victoria into the southern districts of N.S. Wales, and is usually found upon the fern trees; it is a smaller darker coloured cicada with a large, sometimes double, black spot on each tegmina.

Distant (Pro. Zool. Soc. 1882) described a number of new species chiefly obtained from North Queensland; and, finding it difficult to give them distinctive specific names that would define their peculiarities, he got over the difficulty by naming them after Australian explorers. _A. willsi_ is a small species measuring about two inches across the wings, which are marked with two small spots, and it can be easily distinguished from all the others by the curious rugose yellowish patch on the sides of the prothorax. It has a very wide range over N.S. Wales, Queensland, North, and probably W. Australia, both along the coast and in the interior.

_Parnkella muelleri_ is only about 1½ inches across the wings which have two spots on each tegmina, and is of a pale yellow tint. It is restricted in its range to North Queensland. The tiny little yellowish green cicada found upon the grassy plains of Southern Victoria and S. Australia, described as _Tibicen infans_, is now placed in the South African Genus _Quintilia_.

[Illustration: =Fig. 157.=--_Macrotristria (cicada) angularis_ (Germer).

The “Fiddler.”

(“Agricultural Gazette,” N.S.W.)]

The Genus _Chlorocysta_ contains two curious pale green insects with vitreous tegmina and wings, the former much more closely reticulated than the ordinary cicada, with many cross and parallel nervures. The head is small, and the body of the male is swollen and cylindrical. _Chlorocysta vitripennis_ was described by Westwood (Ann. Nat. Hist. 1851); the larger male measures slightly over 2 inches across the wings. The female is greenish or reddish, the abdomen conical but not inflated. They frequent low scrub; the southern forms found about the Tweed River, N.S.W., are green or yellowish; those from North Queensland quite brown. _Glaucopsaltria viridis_, described by Goding and me from S. Queensland, is placed by Distant in this genus.

[Illustration: =Fig. 158.=--Section of stem of eucalyptus, in which the Black Cicada (_Psaltoda moerens_) has laid her eggs.]

The Genus _Melampsalta_ contains a great number of our small black or dark brown cicadas often marked with orange red or dull yellow. The members of the genus are found over Asia, Africa and Europe, over 40 are described from Australia, and 7 from New Zealand. Some species are very numerous in early summer, and are known as “Squeakers” on account of their musical notes. _Melampsalta torrida_, originally described by Erichson from Tasmania, has a wide range round from Queensland to W. Australia. It is almost black, with several light marks in the centre of the thorax, and two irregular rounded confluent black spots at the tips of the tegmina. It measures about two inches across the wings, but is variable both in size and in the wing markings. _M. abdominalis_, about the same size, is black, with two lines of reddish yellow on the apical portion of the dorsal surface of the abdomen, and the under surface red; when the tegmina are closed there is a distinctive opaline mark on either side. It is common in S. Australia and N.S.W. _M. eyrei_ is a much smaller species, with the head and thorax black, lined with yellow, and the whole of the abdomen except the black tip, bright yellow; it is common in N. Queensland.

The members of the Genus _Pauropsalta_ are easily distinguished from those of the previous group by having five apical areas in the wings, while the former have six. Sixteen species are described from Australia. _Pauropsalta encaustica_ is our commonest species with a very wide range over Australia; it is of a uniform black tint, with faint pale brown marks on the head and prothorax, and an infuscated patch on the hind margins of the wings; the abdominal segments are finely ringed with white to reddish brown. _P. annulata_ is a synonym of this cicada. _P. nodicosta_ is a small brown species from Kalgoorlie, W.A., with a curious node in the centre of the costal nervure of the tegmina. _P. mneme_, larger, and broader than _P. encaustica_, has the abdominal segments richly edged with red. It is common on the Blue Mountains, N.S.W.

The Genus _Cystosoma_ was created by Westwood (1842) to contain the great green “Bladder Cicada” which he called _Cystosoma saundersi_, that at one time was common in the orange orchards around Newcastle, N.S.W. Mrs. Ross says it is now common about Armidale, N.S.W., on the sweet brier, and I have also had it on willows from Glen Innes N.S.W. A second much smaller species, with similar opaque green tegmina, _C. schmeltzi_, ranges up the coast of North Queensland.

The two curious hairy brown cicadas belonging to the Genus _Tettigarcta_ are restricted in their range. _Tettigarcta tomentosa_, the darkest in tint, has each side of the thorax produced into a distinct spine; it is only found in Tasmania. _T. crinita_ comes from similar country in the Gippsland forests, Victoria; it is not quite so hairy, and has the thorax rounded on the outer margin without any spines.

Family 2. Frog-Hoppers.

CERCOPIDAE.

The members of this family are not very numerous though world-wide in their distribution. They are stout, wedge-shaped, elongate insects of moderate size; the head is furnished with large flattened eyes on the sides; with a few exceptions two ocelli are present on the vertex between the eyes; the small, short antennae, composed of two bead-shaped joints surmounted with a bristle, are placed in front of and between the eyes. The pronotum is large with the triangular scutellum occupying the centre of the back; the tegmina, longer than the body, are coriaceous, reticulate, with two long discoidal and five or more apical cells. The coxae and femora are short; the posterior tibiae are hardly longer than the others, rounded at the base, spatulate at the apex, armed on the outer margins with two stout spurs, the second twice the length of the first; the tibiae and basal joints of the tarsi are terminated with rows of spines.

Most of our known species were described by the French naturalists, Amyot & Serville (Annals Soc. Entom. de France 1845); and Walker (Brit. Museum Cat. Homoptera 1851); and but little attention has been paid to them since. Our most characteristic species belong to the Genus _Eurymela_. Seventeen species are listed by Walker from all parts of Australia. They are large, thickset frog-hoppers, with the head broad and truncate in front with the face much inflexed; their general tint is blue-black with the head and elytra marked with red or white bands or spots. They lay their eggs under the bark of young gum trees, slitting it in regular rings with their stout ovipositors and leaving a white papery substance along the punctures. The young cling to the twigs in clusters after they emerge, and they may often be seen in different stages of growth upon the same bush. They are very active little creatures, creeping round the twig when disturbed, and jumping as soon as they are touched. Many of them are much sought after by ants which come to them for the honey dew they secrete.

_Eurymela bicincta_ measures ½ an inch in length, and is broad in proportion; it is of a uniform dark shining blue tint, with the head, thorax, and base of the elytra bright red. It has a wide range and may often be found in colonies of 30 or 40 clustering together on a gum sapling. _E. rubrovittata_ is about the same size; it is black, with the under surface, face, and three narrow transverse bands round the thorax and elytra bright red. It has a range from Western Australia to Queensland. _E. speculum_ is a common species, recorded from Tasmania to Queensland; it is of a uniform dark blue-black tint with a white patch on either side of the face, and two irregular oval white spots on each wing cover. _E. pulchra_ is smaller, with the head and thorax marked with red, and two irregular broken bands of white on the side of each wing cover.

Five species of the Genus _Aphrophora_ are described by Walker from Tasmania and Australia. The members of this genus are known as “Cuckoo-spittle Insects” from the remarkable habit the larvae have of enveloping themselves in a mass of frothy liquid, which is supposed to be formed to protect their soft bodies from insects that might prey upon them; it, however, really makes them very conspicuous objects on a twig, and several species of wasps are known in America to drag them out of this covering and use them to provision their nests.

Our common “Cuckoo-spittle Insect,” found upon the she-oak (Casuarina), ti-tree (Leptospermum), and Melaleuca, is _Chalepus teliferus_; the larvae are pale-brown soft oval creatures, which jump when removed from the frothy liquid, and in this liquid they remain enveloped until they are ready to emerge. The perfect insect measures under ½ an inch in length, is of an elongate boat-shaped form; the head is produced in front as a slender process, curved upwards; the tips of the elytra come to a compressed point; the general colour is dull reddish brown, with the horn on the head ferruginous, and the wing covers mottled on the sides with black. A second species, _Chalepus pugionatus_, has been described by Stal from Australia.

Family 3. Tree-Hoppers.

MEMBRACIDAE.

This is a group of homopterous insects chiefly confined to the tropical parts of the world. They are well represented in Australia, though we have nothing like the remarkable creatures covered with horns and spines found in South America and popularly known in consequence as “little devils.” They are remarkable for the wonderful development of the prothorax which, projecting in front, often forms a hood above the head, so that the latter is much hidden when viewed from above; the eyes are globular and project on the sides of the head, and there is a pair of ocelli in a line between them; while the short bristle-like antennae are well below the eyes on either side of the base of the stout rostrum (beak), which at rest is turned down between the legs. The abdomen is covered with the wings and parchment-like tegmina, the extremities of which come together to form a sharp point. The legs are short and stout, without the numerous spines common on the “frog-hoppers”; and the tarsi consist of three joints, the first longest. They can both fly and jump very well, but trust to the latter method to escape from their enemies. They and the members of allied families can be easily collected by shaking or beating low scrub over an open umbrella; or can be bred from larval forms on the food plant.

Very little attention had been paid to our tree-hoppers until a few years ago when Goding published his “Check List of the Membracidae described from Tasmania and Australia” (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1898); in this he gives many notes and lists 22 species, chiefly described by Walker (Brit. Museum Cat. Homoptera 1851), Fairmaire, in his Review of the family in 1846, and Stal in 1869. In 1903 Goding, in the same Journal, published a “Monograph of the Australian Membracidae.” In this he re-describes all the known, and adds a number of new species to our fauna, bringing the list up to a total of 32 described species, comprised in 14 genera, grouped in 6 sub-families, based chiefly upon the shape and structure of the prothorax.

The Genus _Sextius_ contains five species, in which the prothorax is ridged in the centre and produced on either side into a rather short acute horn standing out on either side, and with the apical portion produced into a keeled spine extending to the tip of the abdomen. _Sextius virescens_, our commonest species, is of a delicate green colour, and feeds upon the sap of the black wattle and other species of Acacia. In early summer it may be found among the foliage in all stages of development; the trees they frequent are frequently infested with ants which come to obtain the honey dew. The female slits the bark with her ovipositor, and lays the eggs in rows. _S. depressus_, about the same size, slightly over ¼ of an inch in length, ranges from Western Australia to Queensland: at Kempsey, N.S.W., I obtained specimens on a slender leafed Acacia. It is of similar green colour to _S. virescens_, with the front of the thorax of a lighter tint, but the projecting horns are shorter and depressed, and the venation of the elytra is much finer. _S. australis_ is about the same size, and of a uniform black tint with a patch of bright silvery pubescence on the sides of the thorax, which is rounded in front and has very short blunt horns. It lives upon the branchlets of a prickly Hakea growing about Sydney.

_Lubra spinicornis_ is a slightly smaller insect, of a general dull brown tint: it has the prothorax produced into two almost erect clubbed horns. Specimens have been obtained from Brisbane, Queensland, and the northern rivers of New South Wales. _Daunus tasmaniae_ is of the same chocolate brown colour; is more robust in proportion. The prothorax forms a regular hood swelling out on either side at the base of the tegmina, and the projecting horns are curved and deeply ridged, and are chisel-shaped at the tips. It is one of the commonest species in Tasmania, and is recorded over a wide area of the eastern mainland as far North as Brisbane.

_Eufroggattia tuberculata_ is a rare insect usually found resting on a twig of a eucalyptus sapling, and is shaped very much like some of the small plant bugs belonging to the Genus _Testrica_; it is short and broad in form, with the head exposed; the thorax has short blunt horns; and the abdomen is broadly rounded at the apex.

Family 4. Lantern-flies.

FULGORIDAE.

This is a very difficult family to satisfactorily define, as their members are very diverse in general shape and structure, with points of resemblance that bring some of the genera very close to the Cercopidae (from which however they differ in the shape of the head), while they somewhat resemble the Jassidae in the structure of the legs.

The typical forms have the front of the head either produced into a lance-shaped structure, or the face and vertex either rounded in front or forming an acute angle. The eyes are large and stand out on the sides of the head; the ocelli, usually two in number, are situated below or near the eyes and are placed in the cavities on the cheeks; in a few species there are three ocelli, while in others they are wanting. The antennae, situated beneath the eyes, and often very peculiar in structure, consist of two short joints surmounted with a bristle.

Many are large handsome insects with bright coloured tegmina and wings; others are of delicate green and grey tints, quite moth-like in form, but can be easily distinguished by the way they rest with their stiff roof-like wings, and by their active jumping habits. The legs are often long, and the hind pair are furnished with a few stout spines on the tibae, but never thickly spined as in the Jassidae. Many of our larger species are found both in the larval and perfect state, on tree trunks. A few species are well-known pests and have an extended range beyond Australia.

Donovan described and figured several species (Insects of New Holland, 1815); Westwood figured and described two in his “Monograph of the Genus Fulgora” (Trans. Linn. Soc. 1837): but the majority of our species are described by Walker (Brit. Mus. Cat. Homoptera, 1851), and he also named others in “Insecta Saundersiana, Homoptera,” 1858, which describes the insects in W. W. Saunders’ great collection.

_Siphanta acuta_, better known under the name of _Cromna acuta_, is one of our commonest fulgorids, moth-like in appearance, of a pale green colour, with broad square-cut fore wings and a short pointed head. It measures about an inch across the outspread wings. It has a wide range in Australia; and its pale green fluffy larvae feed upon the sap of many plants, and readily jump when touched. It is also well known in Hawaii, Sandwich Islands, where it is called the “torpedo-bug” from the way it jumps; and it is said to be a pest on the coffee plants (Smith Annual Report, Hawaii 1904). A number of species of these moth-like forms are described by Walker from Australia and Tasmania, and placed in the Genus _Bythoscopus_, which genus, when further studied, will probably be much subdivided.

[Illustration: =Fig. 159.=--_Scolypopa (Pochazia) australis._

The Common Passion-vine Hopper.]

_Pochazia australis_ measures about ¾ of an inch across the short broad fore wings, which are margined and irregularly barred with chocolate brown; the head is short and rounded in front. Melichar, in his “Monographie der Ricaniiden, Wien,” 1898, places _P. australis_ in the Genus _Scolypopa_. The larva is a green wedge-shaped little creature clothed at the tip of the abdomen with a bunch of white filaments. It is a very common insect with a wide range. Sometimes it is a pest on passion vines; the eggs are laid in the slender tendrils, and the larvae suck up the sap of the stalks. Another species is common among the foliage of the silky oak (_Grevillia robusta_) in Southern Queensland.

_Achilus flammeus_ has the body and wings of a bright red colour, with the small head showing prominently in front: the broadly rounded opaque elytra and wings cover the short body. It measures about an inch across the outspread wings. Nothing is known about its habits or life history, but in the summer evenings it sometimes comes flying towards the light, and can be found on the windows.

The Genus _Poeciloptera_ contains a number of small, short broad-winged forms. Donovan figures _Poeciloptera modesta_, which has pink fore wings, each marked with two small red spots, and the hind wings have a pale bluish tint.

_Prolepta dilatata_ is a typical, dull reddish-brown fulgorid, measuring nearly an inch from the tip of the long slender head to the extremities of the folded tegmina which are broadest across the tips: and the slender prolonged forehead is over two lines in length. This insect was described from W. Australia, but it has a wide range and can be collected about Sydney. _P. obscurata_ is about the same size, more rugose in structure, and with markings of dark brown; the markings on the somewhat opaque wings are more distinct, striated and irregular than in _P. dilatata_: it can also be easily recognised by the shorter and thicker process on the forehead. It has a wide range over Australia.

The Genus _Eurybrachys_ contains a number of short, dark brown insects with broad rounded heads; they run about on the trunks of trees, jumping at the least alarm. _Eurybrachys leucostigma_ is a very stout, broad, dull brown insect, about ¾ of an inch across the outspread wings. Some 16 species are described from all parts of Australia. The members of the Genera _Ledra_ and _Stenocotis_ are broad elongate insects with the front of the head spade-shaped, and the convex body tapers to a sharp point. Their larvae are almost as flat as a bit of paper. _Stenocotis australis_ is about ¾ of an inch in length, and of a dull brown tint.

Family 5. Leaf-Hoppers.

JASSIDAE.

These insects are minute froghopper-like forms with the head rounded in front, and with the body tapering towards the tips of the tegmina. The head is large, with the oval or rounded eyes projecting on the sides, and with a pair of ocelli situated on the front margin. The antennae, bristle-like, of considerable length, are each composed of two short cylindrical basal joints with a thread-like terminal portion, and are placed in front and below the eyes. The legs are long, well adapted for jumping (their chief means of progression); and the tibiae of the hind pair are thickly clothed with stout spines.

Though these insects are very small, many species appear upon crops and herbage in such immense numbers that they often do a great deal of damage, and are very interesting from an economic standpoint. In Japan, for instance, there are several species very serious pests in the rice fields; while in North America _Erythroneura vitis_ is a well-known pest upon the foliage of vines.

They are abundant on the low scrub and grass lands in this country in favourable localities, and may be easily collected with a sweeping net, or by shaking the bushes over an open umbrella; yet, probably on account of their small size and retiring habits, few specimens are to be found even in our Museum collections.

The sugar-cane hopper, _Perkinsiella saccharicida_, a native of Queensland, is a dull brownish yellow hopper with a dark parallel stripe down the centre of the basal portions of the tegmina; it measures a ¼ of an inch in length. Kirkaldy described it from Hawaii, where it has been introduced, and is a serious pest to the sugar-cane.

A very pretty little unidentified species, bright red and yellow, with the fore wings marked with dark brown, is common upon the broad soft leaves of _Eucalyptus robusta_, where the curious little larvae rest in families of three or four; each is enveloped in white filaments which proceed from round the tip of the abdomen. The larvae of another species have been observed to form large colonies on the surface of the leaves of low eucalyptus bushes on the hills near Capertee N.S.W. They suck up the sap, discolouring the centre of the leaves; each exudes a globule of liquid from the tip of the abdomen, which they drag out into thin threads with their hind legs, to form a spider-web-like covering over their bodies, and this web dries soon after the leaves are gathered.

Family 6. Lerp Insects.

PSYLLIDAE.

These are small homoptera, in appearance suggesting miniature cicadas. The head is generally broader than long, sometimes deflected and with large eyes; the ocelli are three in number, the lateral ones situated on the summit of the head close to the hind margins of the eyes, and the central one at the apex of the median suture. The antennae are each composed of ten joints, the first two shorter and thicker than the following ones, and the terminal joint surmounted with two short bristles. The thorax is broad, with well developed tegmina and wings, and like the aphids both pairs might properly be called wings. The venation is simple, constant, and useful in the work of classification. They are formed for jumping, with a spine-like process on the coxa of each hind leg, and the apex of the tibiae of the hind legs furnished with a row of short fine spines. The tarsi are two jointed, terminating in a pair of large claws.

[Illustration: =Fig. 160.=--Diagram of Psylla (_Thea opaca_) ♀.

Showing the structure and venation of the wings.

1_a_, Face lobes; 2_a_, prothorax; 3_a_, mesanotum; 4_a_, dorsulum; 5_a_, scutellum, tegmina; 1_b_, costal nervure; 2_b_, primary stalk; 3_b_, clavus; 4_b_, clavical suture; 5_b_, stalk of sub-costa; 6_a_, stalk of cubitus; 7_b_, sub-costa; 8_b_, lower branch of cubitus; 9_b_, upper branch of cubitus; 10_b_, lower fork of lower cubitus; 11_b_, stigma; 12_b_, upper fork of the lower branch of cubitus; 13_b_, radius; 14_b_, lower fork of upper cubitus; 15_b_, upper fork of upper cubitus.

3, Genitalia ♂; 4, Genitalia ♀; 5, Head of _Spondyliaspis eucalypti_, showing face lobes.

(Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W.)]

The female lays her eggs in clusters on the twigs or foliage, from which the curious, little, large-headed larvae emerge, and, after undergoing a series of moults during which they develop large wing-pads on the shoulders and more joints in the antennae, they finally come forth, perfect four-winged insects. They take their family name from _Psylla_, a flea, given them by Linnaeus in reference to their jumping powers, and their popular name of “Lerp Insects,” from the habit of the larvae of many species of forming “lerp scales,” shell-like protective coverings formed from exudations from the insects. Other species cover themselves with flocculent matter after the manner of mealy bugs; and yet another group form regular oval or rounded galls on the foliage. They are found in most of the warmer parts of the world, and are very numerous in Australia, where they seem to take the place of the APHIDAE to a certain extent; they are readily collected in all stages of growth upon their food plant, and can be easily bred.

The Sugar lerp, _Psylla eucalypti_, whose larvae cover the leaves of several species of gum trees with their white woolly shells, was described by Dobson from Tasmania (Pro. Royal Soc. Van Diemen’s Land, 1851). It is a slender little green creature with very long face lobes, and, when crawling about, turns the tip of its body upwards, so that it looks as if it were walking on its head. It is now placed in the Genus _Spondyliaspis_.

In the same year (1851) Walker published his Homoptera (Cat. Brit. Museum) in which he recorded 5 species, all from Tasmania; and it was not until 1898 that they were again noticed when Maskell described 3 species from Australia (Trans. N. Zealand Inst.); and Schwarz defined another (Pro. Ent. Soc. Washington) in 1897. Between the years 1900 and 1903 I contributed three papers (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W.) monographing our species, in which 64 new species are added to our fauna. I followed Low in the classification of the sub-families, adding Scott’s fifth division for those with small heads and no face lobes.

In the LIVIINAE, the front of the head is not produced into face lobes; the stalk of the cubitus is either shorter, as long as, or longer than the lower branch of the cubitus. _Crewiis longipennis_ is of a general bright red tint, and is ¼ of an inch in length; it ranges from Tasmania to the North of New South Wales. The larva forms a rounded pale yellow lerp covered with fine woolly filaments upon the leaves of gum trees. _Lasiopsylla rotundipennis_ forms a large, flattened, irregularly rounded white scale on the foliage of _Eucalyptus melliodora_, under which the flattened, pale green larva hides.

The Sub-family APHALARINAE contains a number of small species, and the head is produced in front into face lobes, with the stalk of the cubitus as long as or longer than the stalk of the sub-costa. They usually form lerp scales; but some are naked, or clothed with soft white woolly filaments.

Several species of the Genus _Spondyliaspis_ belong to this group; all of them form “sugar lerp scales,” often encrusting all the foliage of the young gum trees, and are so abundant that in the Mallee scrub country in Victoria and S. Australia the blacks used to collect and eat it in quantities, and had a regular “manna harvest.” _Cardiaspis artifex_ is a short, reddish yellow insect, the larvae of which form beautiful barred shell-like lerps, marked with red and yellow to look like delicate fretwork, upon the leaves of _Eucalyptus robusta_. _C. tetrix_ is a pretty pink and grey species found in the Adelong district, N.S.W. The larva constructs a most remarkable cage of fine red bars, not unlike a lady’s hair net, beneath which the larva crawls about freely like a bird in a cage. _Rhinocola corniculata_ often covers the leaves of different eucalypts with its elongate, opaque, horny, yellow lerps. The test is not unlike that of a large _Mytilaspis_ scale, but is open at the broad end through which the little larva can creep in and out. It ranges from New South Wales to Western Australia. _R. eucalypti_ is a very tiny, little, dark brown psylla, the larvae of which cluster at the tips of the foliage of young blue gums (_Eucalyptus globulus_), and cover themselves with threads of white flocculent matter. It was described by Maskell from New Zealand, but is common both in Tasmania and Australia: it has also been introduced into Africa on the same eucalypt.

The larvae of the Genus _Thea_ are curious, broad, flattened creatures, with hard integument. They hide under the dead bark on the trunks of the white stemmed gums, spreading their white woolly secretion around them; the ants look after them, and probably protect them from many enemies in return for the “honey dew,” of which secretion the ants are very fond. _Thea opaca_ is of a general reddish pink colour mottled with brown and black; the wings are transparent, with a dark stigma on the fore wing.

The members of the Sub-family PSYLLINAE have the same well-defined conical face lobes, but the stalk of the cubitus is shorter than the stalk of the sub-costa. The larvae may be quite naked, but most of them produce woolly filaments more or less covering them, and form no true lerp scales or galls. The typical Genus _Psylla_ comprises a number of usually small and somewhat stouter insects, many of which cluster in swarms like aphids upon the foliage of wattles and other trees. The eggs, larvae, pupae, and perfect insects may be found on the same twigs. _Psylla acaciae-decurrentis_ is a slender, dark-winged insect remarkable for the length of its slender antennae; it is common upon the black wattle in early summer. _P. acaciae-baileyanae_ is a much smaller yellow species with mottled wings that often swarms over the cultivated “Cootamundra wattle,” and is reported to have destroyed all the flower-buds of this wattle in the neighbourhood of Melbourne in 1905. _P. capparis_ is a mottled winged species that frequents the foliage of _Capparis mitchelli_ in the western scrubs: _P. schizoneurodes_ infests the twigs of the allied “Warrior Bush”; the larvae are covered with flocculent matter and have a globule of liquid substance at the tip of the abdomen; when massed together they look much like “woolly blight” on the apple trees. _P. sterculiae_ is a small brownish species, found upon the twigs of the Kurrajong, and has a wide range over New South Wales.

[Illustration: =Fig. 161.=--_Psylla sterculiae_ (Froggatt).

The Kurrajong Twig Psylla.

(“Agricultural Gazette,” N.S.W.)]

Two very curious species are found upon the thick fleshy leaves of our native figs, and one, _Mycopsylla fici_, lays her eggs upon the foliage, the squat grey larvae burying their beaks in the leaf cause a flow of milky sap, under which they hide in small colonies, and when ready to emerge crawl from beneath the viscid mass. Where numerous, they cover the foliage with these sticky patches, and cause the leaves to fall. The perfect psylla is a handsome, dark-coloured insect with long antennae and ample transparent wings.

[Illustration: =Fig. 162.=--_Tyora sterculiae_ (Froggatt).

The Star-psylla found on the surface of the leaves of the Kurrajong.

(“Agricultural Gazette,” N.S.W.)]

Sub-family TRIOZINAE. The cubitus of the wing has no stalk, the veins forking directly from its junction with the sub-costa. All our species, with one exception, come into the typical Genus _Trioza_: many of them are gall makers in the larval state, others are naked and cling to the under surface of twigs and leaves. The larvae of the gall-makers are broad, oval, flattened creatures, covered with a mealy secretion, the outer margin of the dorsal shield in each case being fringed with fine regular ciliae. Most of the perfect insects are thickset; they range from chestnut brown to reddish yellow; and have clear transparent wings. _Trioza carnosa_ makes a large, oval, fleshy, brightly tinted gall with an irregular opening at the summit, often covering and aborting the foliage of eucalypts about Sydney. The larva of _T. eucalypti_ forms a rounded, hard, woody gall upon the leaves, without any opening on either side until the gall contracts and splits open, when the full grown pupa emerges. _T. casuarinae_ is a very pretty little psylla with dark-barred wings, and its curious naked fish-like larva clings to the slender foliage of the she-oak (_Casuarina_). _T. banksiae_ has a tiny, naked, yellow larva covered with silvery down; it is a rare insect found on the under surface of the honeysuckle leaves. Nearly all these species have been collected within a day’s journey from Sydney, but have a wide range on the eastern coast.

The Sub-family PRIONOCNEMINAE was formed by Scott for Walker’s Genus _Tyora_, in which I have placed two species. _Tyora sterculiae_ is a pale green, aphid-like psylla, with long antennae and large transparent wings. The larvae cluster together on the leaves of the Kurrajong, forming white patches over the foliage, and each larva throws out slender white threads, fringing the tip of the abdomen and radiating about the body. _T. hibisci_ is a delicate pale green insect which has been taken on the foliage of _Hisbiscus tiliaceus_, about Brisbane, Queensland, and also on a creeper on the Tweed River, New South Wales.

Family 7. Aphids or Plant Lice.

APHIDAE.

These destructive little creatures are well known to gardeners under different names, such as “smother or green-fly,” “plant lice,” or “blight.” This family contains one of the most destructive and widespread pests that ever attacked cultivated plants, namely the vine louse (_Phylloxera vastatrix_), which has destroyed millions of pounds’ worth of vines, and has followed its host all over the world. Aphids are all small soft-bodied creatures, green, black, or yellow in colour; and at least ten introduced species are to be commonly found in our gardens and fields; but as far as I know, no indigenous aphid is recorded in Australia.

The life history of these insects is very complex; the winter eggs or larvae lie dormant during the cold season in crevices on the trunks, or hidden underground on the roots of their host plants; but as the warm weather approaches they crawl up the trunks, cluster round the opening leaf buds, and sticking their sharp beaks into the tissue, suck up the sap. These give birth to living larvae which grow very rapidly, and in turn (though virgin females) bring forth fresh broods of live larvae that in the course of several generations develop two pairs of large transparent wings, and consist usually of both sexes, though in some species the males are wanting. The last generation fly away in swarms but before dying deposit eggs which carry on the cycle of their life into the next summer.

The wingless forms are short, stout, rounded creatures with small, slightly lobed heads, and rather stout 3 to 7 jointed antennae; the legs are well-developed with two-jointed feet. The abdomen often swells out into a flask-like shape; it is furnished on the 5th segment with a pair of cylindrical tubes called siphons, through which it discharges a sweet secretion known as “honey dew”; this liquid is often ejected in such quantities on aphis-infested plants that it covers the foliage, and attracts the ants, which come and lick up the globules of honey-dew on the tips of the siphons, and even caress the aphis with their antennae; and therefore in popular works these insects are often described as “ants’ cows.”

[Illustration: =Fig. 163.=--_Siphonophora rosae_ (Linn.).

The Rose Aphis of the garden.

1, Rose buds infested with aphis; 2, larva; 3, winged female aphis.

(“Agricultural Gazette,” N.S.W.)]

[Illustration: =Fig. 164.=--_Aphis persicae-niger_ (Smith).

The American Peach Aphis (introduced).

(“Agricultural Gazette,” N.S.W.)]

Among the introduced species common in Australia is the Cabbage Aphis, _Aphis brassicae_, a dull green insect covered with a floury exudation; it is one of the greatest pests that the cabbage-growers have to deal with, and is always most troublesome in dry weather. The Rose Aphis, _Siphonophora rosae_, is a pale green species appearing in the spring on the young buds of the roses, but seldom doing very serious damage. The Woolly Aphis, _Schizoneura lanigera_, common both on the roots and branches of apple trees, is found in most of our old orchards; the dull blue aphids cluster together in colonies with their beaks buried deeply in the bark, and the clusters become covered with a mass of soft white flocculent exudation, hiding them from view. From the irritation to the plant tissue caused by their presence large galls or excrescences appear all over the branches. The Peach Aphis, _A. persicae-niger_, is another common orchard pest which winters on the roots of the peach trees: in early summer they commence to spread, and if neglected do a great deal of damage to the leaf and flower buds.

The chief work dealing with the systematic classification of plant lice is Buckton’s “Monograph of the British Aphidae,” published by the Roy. Society, London 1881. A number of new species have been described since by American entomologists in bulletins on Economic Zoology.

Family 8. Snow-Flies.

ALEURODIDAE.

These are all very small delicate creatures; both sexes are furnished with two pairs of broad rounded wings with simple parallel veins, and are usually thickly covered with a mealy white dust from which they take their popular name of “Snow-Flies.” The head is broad, furnished with a three-jointed beak enclosing setae; seven-jointed antennae; and large reniform eyes, with an ocellus on either side above the eyes. The thorax is broad and the abdomen soft and rounded. The tarsi are two-jointed terminating in two claws at the extremities.

The female lays her eggs in clusters on the under surface of the leaves, where the young larvae later on form regular oval, glassy tests of various colours, enclosed in which they feed and finally pupate. The adult insects have their short broad wings slightly expanded, and cluster together in threes and fours: but the moment their food plant is touched they fly out in a little cloud. They can, like the scale insects, be very easily introduced into a new country with their food plant, and several species, like _Aleurodes vaporariorum_ described by Westwood from Europe, have a wide range over America and this continent.

The snow-flies are well represented in Australia, and several species do a considerable amount of damage to native shrubs, but on account of their delicate structure and small size they are difficult to collect, and harder to preserve when collected; if mounted on card they dry up, with nothing to determine them from but the wings, which have very few distinctive characters. The most satisfactory method of preserving them, is to drop the live insects into oil of cloves on a micro slip, when they usually open their wings and legs, and then make, with a little care, very fine objects when mounted in balsam; at times, however, the floury covering floats off the wings and body and sometimes clouds the mount.

Maskell has described 8 species from Australia (Trans. N. Zealand Inst. 1896); most of these descriptions, however, were based upon the larval tests or scales (and not the adult insects) which had been sent to him under the idea that they were scale insects; so that whoever takes up the study of snow-flies will have to breed them out, to be sure of the identity of his species. _Aleurodes styphelia_ forms a flattened, oval, black test fringed with white waxy tubes almost as long as the encircled larva, scattered about over the leaves of _Styphelia richei_, a common scrub bush about Sydney. _Aleurodes t-signata_ forms a spiny black test; and with a second undetermined pale yellow species without a marginal fringe, is found about Sydney on the foliage of _Acacia longifolia_. Another species, _A. banksiae_, is found upon both the honeysuckle (_Banksia_) and the bottle brush (_Callistemon_).

In Maskell’s paper, which is an important contribution to the study of these small but very interesting insects, he lists 65 known species belonging to the typical Genus _Aleurodes_; some have since been described from America, of which a few have been placed in the Genus _Aleurodicus_, formed by Douglas for those with a distal and basal branch on both wings.

Family 9. Scale Insects.

COCCIDAE.

These insects take their popular name of scale insects from the habit that many of the typical species have of protecting themselves, after they have settled down on their food plant, by forming a shield or scale over their backs under which they feed and produce their eggs or living larvae. To form the scale the moulted larval skin, called the pellicle, becomes a nucleus in the first place, round which exudations are added until the scale insect ceases growing.

The larvae are pale yellow, pink, or dull-red coloured little creatures, oval or shield-shape in form, usually fringed round the margins of the body with fine filaments, which are often long upon the somewhat thickened irregularly-jointed antennae and form longer setae upon the tip of the abdomen. They have distinct black eyes, well-developed legs; the mouth is pointed and beak-like. At this stage of their existence the sexes do not differ in outward appearance, but when they attach themselves to their food plant the males and females of the same species often construct scales of very dissimilar form; while in others the male scales are simply more elongate than those of the female.

The male coccid is a delicate fragile little creature, usually microscopic in size, so that, unless bred out in confinement from scale-infested foliage, they are seldom seen. He has a well defined head rounded behind, furnished with moderately long antennae composed of thickened irregularly-jointed segments fringed and surmounted with fine filaments. The globular black eyes stand out on the sides of the head, but the mouth is aborted so that it cannot feed. The thorax, lobed on the dorsal surface, is furnished with a pair of rounded wings each with a simple central nervure, but he can fly well in spite of their delicate structure. The slender legs are simple, terminating in rudimentary hooks; the elongated abdomen is distinctly segmented and furnished at the extremity with a pair of long slender white filaments. This period of his existence is short: thousands of them perish very soon after they leave their scale, and the survivors as soon as they have impregnated the female die.

The female coccid as soon as she settles down to suck up the sap develops under her protective shield (which, unlike the male, she never leaves) into an oval or rounded yellow mass: her legs, antennae, and even head become aborted though the segments of the abdomen are well defined in most species, and finally she becomes simply a sack of eggs. She deposits her eggs under the protection of the shield, in other cases the larvae develop within her shrunken dead skin.

The larvae swarm out and spread over plants when, owing to their immense numbers sucking up the sap with their sharp beaks, they soon injure the tissue and often kill the food plant. Thus from an economic point of view the scale insects are one of the most important groups of the insect-world that man has to deal with, and thousands of pounds are spent in spraying and fumigating cultivated trees to destroy these pests. Many species are cosmopolitan in their range and choice of food plants, having been introduced all over the world, but Australia has a great number of indigenous species, many remarkable for their curious habits, particularly those forming solid woody galls on the eucalypts.

The classification of the scale insects is based chiefly upon the structure of the adult female coccid, viz.:--Of the spinnerets, abdominal cleft, lobes, spines, and anal ring of the abdomen, and the structure and number of joints of the antennae. The shape and structure of the puparium or scale, or other secretions are used to separate them into the larger sub-divisions.

The greater number of our species were described by Maskell in the “Transactions of the New Zealand Institute between the years 1878–1898,” in which period he added over 100 new species to our list: Green (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1900) has described some others; and in the same Journal (1882–1898) I dealt with the gall-making coccids belonging to the sub-family BRACHYSCELINAE. In 1894 Maskell issued a “Synoptical List of the Coccidae reported from Australia and the Pacific Islands,” in which 180 species were credited to Australia. To this Maskell added later a number of new forms; and Fuller others from Western Australia (Trans. Ent. Soc. London 1899). In Mrs. Fernald’s “Catalogue of the Coccidae of the World” (Hatch Experiment Station Bulletin 88, 1903) over 328 species are listed, from this country, but there are a considerable number of doubtful species among them.

The COCCIDAE have been divided into a number of sub-families: I follow Green (Coccidae of Ceylon, 1896), though Mrs. Fernald in following Cockerell reverses the families and starts with the mealy bugs; I also retain most of the well-known generic names unless there is a very valid reason for discarding them, which does not appear to be the case in many of Cockerell’s amendments.

The Sub-family DIASPINAE are known as armoured scales and embrace most of the forms which cover themselves with stout horny shields (puparia). When adult the female is almost legless, with rudimentary antennae, and incapable of movement. The members of the Genus _Aspidiotus_ form round scales, and among them are some of our worst orchard pests. The introduced species _Aspidiotus auranti_, the Red scale of citrus trees, is now found on many garden shrubs. The puparium of the adult female is dull reddish yellow with the centre lighter coloured, and the twigs, leaves and fruit of neglected trees are often covered with these scales in all stages of growth. _A. perniciosus_, the notorious San José Scale, that attacks deciduous fruit-trees in the same manner, is a dull brown circular scale; its original home is somewhat doubtful, and though it was first recorded as a pest in California, is said to have come from China. The scales are much darker than those of the red scale, and infest the branches and twigs so thickly that they destroy the bark, and whenever they attach themselves to the fruit produce a red spot. _A. hederi_ (better known under the name of _A. nerii_), is a pure white scale with a yellow centre; it has a world-wide range, and its range extends far out into our western scrubs, sometimes covering the whole of a large tree. _A. rossi_ is a very distinct, round, black scale, partial to _Euonymus_ in the garden, and to grass trees in the bush. _A. ficus_ is often known as the “Round Scale” from its size and regular shape; it is deep chocolate brown in colour, common upon palms, and is sometimes found upon oranges coming from the Pacific Islands.

_Fiorinia acaciae_ covers the stems and twigs of _Acacia longifolia_ with its narrow white ribbed scale; it is much longer than broad, and is truncate at the extremities; this gives it a very distinctive character.

The Genus _Diaspis_ contains a number of delicate, more elongated scales, among which is the well known white rose scale _Diaspis rosae_, common in the garden. _Poliaspis exocarpi_ is another white scale infesting _Oxylobium_, _Dillwynia_, and other bush shrubs; the male scales are long, slender, and loosely attached to the smaller twigs.

The Genus _Chionaspis_, containing a number of cosmopolitan and indigenous species, has the base of the scale narrow, elongate, but broadly rounded at the extremity. _Chionaspis xerotides_ is white, common upon the blades of the sedge growing along the sea shore at Botany, N.S.W., and has a wide range. _C. eugeniae_ is a larger broader scale, variable in size and shape; it infests several native shrubs, and a very large form is found on the waratah.

_Mytilaspis_ is another world-wide genus, in which the scales are attenuated at the base and are oyster-like in shape; _Mytilaspis pomorum_ is the common “Mussel” or “Oyster” scale of the apple tree found all over the world. _M. spinifera_ is a handsome, broad, white scale common on the weeping myall (_Acacia pendula_), growing in the interior. _M. striata_ is a very slender form of scale that has had to adapt its shape to the slender foliage of the Casuarina which it infests. _M. acaciae_ is a grey species that clusters thickly together in masses like the apple scale, covering the stems of several different species of Acacias in the bush with its stout irregular scales.

[Illustration: Plate XXXIV.--HOMOPTERA.

Family =Coccidae=.

1. _Apiomorpha urnalis_ (Tepper). 2. _Frenchia semiocculta_ (Mask.). 4. _Frenchia casuarinae_ (Mask.). 3. Galls of Buprestid beetles (_Ethon corpulentum_, Bohem.).]

[Illustration: _Plate XXXIV.--HOMOPTERA._]

In the Sub-family LECANIINAE the female coccids are active or stationary; naked or covered with some secretion; sometimes without legs; the abdomen marked with a median cleft and furnished with two dorsal lobes. Several species of the tropical Genus _Ceroplastes_ are found about Sydney, where they were introduced into the gardens at a very early date, and have since spread into the orchards and bush. The Indian wax-scale, _Ceroplastes ceriferus_, covers orchard trees, and bush and garden shrubs with its irregular rounded masses of greasy white matter that protect the liver-coloured coccids beneath. _C. rubens_ is a smaller and more regularly rounded dull red scale, the enveloping material forming a hard waxy shell.

The members of the Genus _Ctenochiton_ are chiefly confined to New Zealand, but two fine species have been described from Australia. _Ctenochiton eucalypti_ comes from the Newcastle district, N.S.W., where it infests the leaves of gum saplings. The scales of the sexes differ very much; those of the male are slender, white, and glassy, while those of the female are broad and dark coloured. _C. rhizophorae_ comes from Queensland, where it is found upon the mangrove. The beautiful, brittle, glass-like scales of _Inglisia foraminifer_ and _I. fossilis_, are often very plentiful in the interior on low scrub trees.

[Illustration: =Figs. 165= and =166=.--Scale Insects.

165. _Icerya purchasi_ (Maskell).

The Cottony-cushion or Fluted Scale of the orange tree.

166. _Ceroplastus ceriferus_ (Anderson).

The introduced Indian Wax Scale of citrus trees, etc.]

In the Genus _Ceronema_, the males form delicate angulated scales, but the females are clothed with a woolly secretion. _Ceronema banksiae_ is a somewhat rare scale found on the foliage of the banksia; it has the secretion upon the dorsal surface, formed into a distinct rib down the centre. _C. caudata_ is a large species with a white woolly covering, a large filament towards the apex forming a large loop rising above the back like a handle. It has a wide range from the South Coast of N.S.W. to North Queensland, and about Bulli, N.S.W., is found on gum trees.

The Genus _Lecanium_ (which has been cut up into a number of new genera) contains many distinct species peculiar to our fauna. _Lecanium tesselatum_, a flattened species with crenulated margins, and common on palms in the gardens, and _L. oleae_, known as “black bug” or “olive scale” by the orchardists, are both introduced species: _L. patersoni_ is a slender form found upon the foliage of _Patersonia glabrata_ growing about Sydney. _L. scrobiculata_ is a bright, shining, convex, dark brown scale infesting several species of acacias; and _L. mirificum_, one of the largest, is found in the interior upon _Acacia pendula_. The curious coccid, _Cryptes (Lecanium) baccatum_, covers the twigs of several acacias, among them the common black wattle in the vicinity of Sydney. At first dull white, they swell out into rounded bead-shaped, blue sacks, so close together that they encrust the whole of the infested twig; when adult they turn dull brown.

The Sub-family DACTYLOPINAE contains most of the well-known “mealy bugs”; they are soft bodied creatures in the earlier stages of their existence, and many species are able to move about until their latter days; instead of forming a separate scale like the first group, they cover themselves with white, woolly, mealy, cottony, or waxy secretions.

The members of the Genus _Asterolecanium_ are represented in Australia by the introduced “oak scale” _Asterolecanium quercicola_, a typical form which, half buried in the infested bark at the tips of the branches, is covered with a waxy, greenish yellow, rounded scale; when numerous it causes the tips of the branches to die back. _A. acaciae_, when numerous, aborts the bark and twigs of _Acacia longifolia_ and is covered with dull brown and white shields; and with _A. stypheliae_, with its raised, shining, oval, bright yellow tests, found on a number of different shrubs, are both native species with a very wide range over Australia.

The Genus _Rhizococcus_ is represented by 8 species, found chiefly upon the twigs of wattles (_Acacia_) and she-oaks (_Casuarina_); and the cosmopolitan Genus _Eriococcus_ by 17 species. Several species of _Eriococcus_ enclosed in their egg-shaped, white-felted sacks are very common in the forest, clustering over and often killing the young trees. _Eriococcus coriaceous_ varies from white to yellow in colour; the sacs are oval, with a distinct anal opening on the summit; they infest the foliage and twigs of many young Eucalypts. _E. paradoxus_ is a somewhat larger, sticky insect; they mass together in regular lumps on the twigs of the same trees: while _E. eucalypti_, as far as my experience goes, is never found on gum trees, as its name implies, but upon the prickly twigs of _Bursaria spinosa_, and its sacs are more depressed and have a browner tint.

[Illustration: =Fig. 167.=--_Eriococcus coriaceous_ (Maskell).

The Eucalyptus scale. Natural size and enlarged.

(Original photo. T. Kirk).]

The typical _Dactylopius_ are free-moving insects, often crawling about until their final stage, when they become covered or surrounded with flocculent woolly matter. _Dactylopius albizziae_ is common on the black wattle, and is sometimes a pest in wattle plantations; it is a blackish-blue berry-shaped coccid surrounded with and lightly clothed on portions of the dorsal surface with white mealy and woolly filaments. _D. aurilanatus_ is chiefly confined to the branchlets of _Araucaria bidwilli_, or “Bunya Bunya.” It is very abundant at times on these trees in the Sydney gardens, and is easily recognised by the broad lines of sulphur-yellow meal or down across the dorsal surface. _D. lobulatus_ is an oval coccid, hiding under loose bark on the trunks of the blue gum, _Eucalyptus globulus_; it is so thickly clothed with white mealy secretion forming filaments round the edges that its form and colour are quite hidden.

In the Genus _Ripersia_ the species have a world-wide range; they are curious wrinkled naked coccids, but are sometimes more or less enveloped in a white covering; they lead an underground existence on the roots of grass and plants: a single species is recorded by Maskell from S. Australia on the roots of a _Leptospermum_. The curious _Antonina australis_ is an underground coccid which infests the roots of the Nut-grass, _Cyperus rotundus_, and was described by Green (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1904) from specimens obtained in the Hunter River district, N.S.W., where it was so plentiful that in the dry seasons it killed a great deal of this sedge. The adult female is a rounded black smooth shining creature about ⅛ of an inch in diameter, enveloped in a coat of white woolly secretion, from which it can be easily removed. The legs and antennae are aborted, but the segmental divisions of the abdomen remain, and the tip is produced into two irregular roughened tubercles, joined at the base with a tuft of stout bristle-like hairs.

[Illustration: Plate XXXVI.--HOMOPTERA.

Family COCCIDAE.

1. _Tachardia australis_ (Froggatt). On Melaleuca. 2. _Tachardia australis_ (Froggatt). Male and female tests. 3. _Tachardia australis_ (Froggatt). Female coccid. 4. _Tachardia decorella_ (Maskell). On Eucalyptus. 5. _Tachardia decorella_ (Maskell). Female in test. 6. _Tachardia decorella_ (Maskell). Female exposed. 7. _Tachardia decorella_ (Maskell). Larva.]

[Illustration: _Plate XXXVI.--HOMOPTERA._]

The Sub-family TACHARDIINAE contains a number of remarkable species, some of considerable commercial value on account of the resinous secretion they encrust themselves with; this secretion is known as lac, and is used for making varnish. The typical female is an irregular wrinkled fleshy mass with a pair of tubular appendages on the back. These appendages were supposed at one time to be used for producing the lac, but Green considers them to be breathing structures. Five species are described from Australia, of which _Tachardia australis_ is so thickly encrusted with reddish brown lac, that it might be of some commercial value in the future; it is very plentiful upon Melaleuca bushes near Maryborough, Queensland, but was described by me from specimens obtained on a small shrub, _Beyeria viscosa_, at Gunnedah, N.S.W. _T. decorella_ is enclosed in a very dainty, flattened, ribbed, cushion-like mass of dull slate-coloured lac; it is found on a number of different trees, among them the water gums (_Eugenia smithii_); and I have also found it on the desert cypress (_Callitris_) in the interior.

[Illustration: =Fig. 168.=--_Antonina australis_ (Green).

The Nut-grass Coccid.

1. Nut-grass showing coccid upon the roots. 2. Adult female coccid removed from enveloping cover (enlarged).]

The Sub-family IDIOCOCCIINAE comprises a number of very curious coccids, some of which are naked; some form waxy tests; while others are enveloped in woody galls. Maskell, who created this division, says they are separated from the MONOPHLEBIINAE by the absence of anal tubercles and the antennae, and from the BRACHYSCELIINAE by the absence of anal appendages. The members of the Genus _Sphaerococcus_ number 21 described species, all but two of which are peculiar to Australia; some form galls, others waxy tests. _Sphaerococcus pirogallus_ cover the whole of the tips of the bushes of _Leptospermum flavescens_ with its curious little pear-shaped galls. At first pink or red, these galls are dull brown when full grown, and have an aperture on the side of the stalk, and the coccid within is attached to a saucer-like rim on the roof of the apex. This is one of the commonest galls about Sydney; acres of these low bushes often have the whole of their foliage covered with masses of these small galls. _S. melaleucae_ does not form a gall, but surrounds itself with a dark waxy secretion like the lac insect; both scales and twigs are often blackened with smut or fumagine. _L. leptospermi_ forms a swelling in the twig which looks as if the tissue had risen over it like a blister and then split down the middle, exposing the dorsal surface. _S. froggatti_ is very common on the tips of Melaleuca bushes growing about Sydney; the dull red coccid is clothed with white secretion resting in an excrescence fringed with slender, reddish brown finger-like processes curling over in an irregular protective gall. _S. socialis_ produces a very curious greyish globular gall with no opening on the outside, and measures up to ½ an inch in diameter. Maskell says: “The outer surface is formed of very closely imbracted scales, which are apparently aborted and coalesced leaves of the tree”; the interior is of a loose structure containing several female coccids, and a few males. It was collected by Lea near Geraldton, W. Australia.

The Genus _Cylindrococcus_ contains 3 species which form curious cone-like galls upon the twigs of the She-oak, _Casuarina_. _Cylindrococcus spiniferus_ varies much in size and shape. They are often very numerous, covering the whole of the bush with their curious, rough, bracteate galls, which are rounded at the base and taper to the extremity. The female, a cylindrical, dull red creature, is enclosed in an elongate, thin tube, which occupies the centre of the gall; this tube is attached at the base of the gall and is surrounded with the bracts. Some of the typical forms might be easily mistaken for seed cones. _C. amplior_, which is a more solitary species, forms a solid seed-shaped gall with the base set in a bract like the calyx of a flower, and the whole might be likened to an unopened bud. It is found in South Australia and the north-western parts of Victoria.

[Illustration: Plate XXXV.--HOMOPTERA.

Family COCCIDAE.

1. _Apiomorpha duplex_ (Schr.). ♀ Gall. 2. _Sphaerococcus leptospermi_ (Mask.). ♀ Galls. 3. _Cylindrococcus spiniferus_ (Mask.). ♀ Galls.]

[Illustration: _Plate XXXV.--HOMOPTERA._]

The Sub-family BRACHYSCELIINAE contains some of the most remarkable insects in our fauna. They were first noticed by Schrader (Trans. Ent. Soc. N.S.W. 1862), who described and figured a number of our commonest species and their galls; to these I have added a number of new species (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1892–1898). They are all gall makers; the beautiful little larva born in the gall is usually yellow, oval, flattened, and fringed round the margin with short glassy filaments. In most species the full-grown female has antennae and legs aborted, and becomes simply a sac of eggs and liquid matter enclosed in a leathery skin, and is furnished with horny tail appendages.

The Genus _Frenchia_ was formed by Maskell for a species, _Frenchia casuarinae_, which forms a gall like a stout blunt thorn; it is about the thickness of a slate pencil and has a small opening at the apex. These twig-like galls spring directly from the branch of the infested _Casuarina_, while the aborted tissue at the base swells out like a blister. The slender, attenuated, red female coccid rests head downward with the tail reaching up to the apical orifice of the gall. A second species, _F. semiocculta_, forms a raised swelling on the twigs of _Casuarina_, with a cleft in the centre, thus forming two lobes. The first is common in Tasmania, Victoria, and N.S. Wales; the latter was collected at Manly, near Sydney.

Schrader called the next Genus _Brachyscelis_, but Rubasmann finding the name preoccupied changed it to _Apiomorpha_; over 30 species are given in Mrs. Fernald’s Catalogue, but there are several species described both by Rubasmann and Tepper that were described from variable or aborted galls that may prove to be synonyms. The female is remarkable for forming a stout woody gall, sometimes sessile, sometimes springing from a stalk; it encloses an oval cell with a circular or transverse aperture at the apex of the gall, through which the male impregnates her by means of his long slender abdomen. The young larvae are hatched within its shelter, and crawl out to reach their food plant. The female is a top-shaped (turbinate) creature encased in a leathery skin, more or less clothed with fine hairs, enveloped in a mealy secretion, with rows of fine spines on the dorsal surface of the abdominal segments, and the body terminating in two horny tails (anal appendages). The head is merged into the thoracic portion, and has the ventral surface wrinkled and bearing a rudimentary mouth; the antennae and legs are aborted. The only distinct specific characters are the dorsal spines and the form of the anal appendages. The males are delicate two-winged insects, with long antennae, slender legs, and the body very long and attenuated, ornamented with two fine filaments. They either form single short tubular galls on the leaves, or form masses of the same tubular galls; or they are placed in rows enfolded in a hood growing from the side of the female gall like a small cockscomb. All the members of this genus are confined to the eucalypts.

_Apiomorpha duplex_ is the largest insect-gall in the world. Springing directly from the twig, it swells out into a stout four-sided gall, 1½ inches in diameter, 3 inches in length; beyond this the apex of the gall is produced into two stout flattened appendages extending another 9 inches. The enclosed female coccid measures up to 1½ inches. _A. munita_ forms an angulated gall rounded at the base, with each angle on the apex furnished with a slender curled horn, but it is very variable both in form and size. _A. pileata_ is an egg-shaped gall, with the apex truncate and forming two lips, the apical orifice forming a keyhole-like slit between them. We have two varieties of this gall, which in their immature state have a membranous tailed cap covering the apex which dries and falls off as the gall matures, leaving the apical orifice exposed. _A. pomiformis_ is shaped like and about the size and shape of a small apple, with the apical orifice situated in a depression in the centre. It is a North Australian form, and is also found on stunted gums in the interior. Specimens of a large gall received from Tennant’s Creek, Central Australia, with the enclosed coccid, show that the structure of the coccid is very different from the _Apiomorpha_ the anal extremity being thimble-shaped, fitting against the apical orifice, so it will require to be placed in a new genus. _A. dipsaciformis_ is an oval gall covered with curled filaments like a “teasel.” In the group in which the male galls are formed on the side of the oval female gall, _A. pharatrata_ is a typical form; the female gall is oval, overshadowed with the mushroom-shaped mass of coalesced tubular galls growing out near the apex.

The female coccids of the Genus _Opisthoscelis_, as they change from the larval stage, lose almost every vestige of the first two pairs of legs, while the hind pair are produced into long attenuated appendages, which in some species (when enclosed in the gall) curve round over the back like hairs; the whole insect is rounded or top-shaped, with a peg-shaped anal appendage. Thirteen species are described, all of which produce galls upon different species of eucalypts. _Opisthoscelis subrotunda_ is our commonest species; the solid fleshy galls, about the size of a pea, often cover and abort much of the foliage of the infested tree. The short rounded coccid fits tightly to the cavity, and the opening, closed by the tip of the anal peg, is on the under side of the leaf. Schrader has described the male galls of this species, which are probably very rare, and I have never been able to discover them.

The short, slender, reddish, tubular galls of _O. spinosa_ are as plentiful as the curious thorn-shaped female galls, which latter have the opening at the tip, and are common on the foliage of the large-leaved ironbark, _Eucalyptus siderophloia_, growing around Sydney. The female coccid, in this and several of the other gall-making coccids with the spine or thorn-shaped structure, is firmly attached to the sides and base of the cavity, and is difficult to remove without damage. The galls of the Genus _Ascelis_ are often dissimilar in form; that of _Ascelis praemollis_ is rounded, with the opening on the under side of the leaf, and except for the shape of the scar and larger size might without close examination be taken for that of _Opisthoscelis subrotunda_; but the enclosed insect is a very different looking creature; it is simply an irregular jelly-like mass, with a short peg-like structure rising from what looks to be the back, but is the tip of the abdomen; this structure is produced into three finger-like projections, which, holding a lump of gummy substance, plug up the basal opening in the gall. _A. schraderi_, which forms a circular, flattened, blister-like gall in the tissue of the leaves of _Eucalyptus corymbosa_, is more flattened, with the anal tail truncate at the apex, without the curious finger-like appendages, and the anal aperture as fine as a pin prick is on the upper surface of the leaf.

I have gone somewhat extensively into the description of these gall-making coccids, owing to the fact that they form such remarkable structures, and differ from all other solid galls in the fact that they are formed by the larvae and are not the result of eggs deposited beneath the plant tissue. Specialists in the study of vegetable growths may find some key to the mystery of gall development in this fact.

The MONOPHLEBIINAE comprises a number of large “mealy bugs,” so called because they form no protective scale, but are simply clothed with a mealy secretion, fine filaments or masses of felted wool. The females are often of considerable size, and during the greater part of their existence are capable of crawling about, but when adult and about to lay their eggs they often become fixed to the food plant. The males are of the usual two-winged type with long antennae and the tip of the abdomen fringed with fine filaments. This division has been cut up into a number of sub-families by Cockerell, and these divisions are given in Mrs. Fernald’s Catalogue, but here I propose to place them together under the one sub-family.

[Illustration: =Fig. 169.=--_Pulvinaria maskelli_ (Olliff).

The Saltbush Mealy Bug of the interior.

_a_, Male; _b_, Showing the male enclosed in pupal test; _c_, Larva; _d_, Ventral view of adult female.

(“Agricultural Gazette,” N.S.W.)]

_Monophlebus crawfordi_ is one of our largest species; the female measures about 1 inch in length and is broad in proportion; she is dull orange yellow marked with parallel bars of purple, and fringed round the edges with fine hairs; and is of a general flattened, broad, oval form, with the dorsal surface distinctly segmented. She is generally found clinging to the stem of a smooth-barked eucalyptus tree, sometimes half hidden under a bit of loose bark and surrounded with white mealy secretion. When egg-laying she sometimes produces a great quantity of fine curled cottony filaments forming a mass much larger than the original size of her body, under which the eggs are deposited.

The Genus _Callipappus_ contains 6 Australian species; the females are flattened, oval, irregularly segmented coccids of a dull brown to purplish red tint, which are usually found crawling about on tree trunks. _Callipappus australe_ was described by Maskell (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1890) under the generic name of _Coelostoma_, a group confined to N. Zealand. The male is a beautiful two-winged insect of a general deep red colour, the wings rose-pink, and the tip of the abdomen clothed with a large bunch of silky white filaments like a tuft of spun glass; from this latter character it has received the fanciful but rather appropriate name of the “Bird of Paradise Fly.” The female is of an oval, flattened form about an inch in length; the body is irregularly segmented and lightly clothed with flakes of a mealy secretion. When depositing her eggs, generally on the trunk of a tree, she becomes attached to the bark with a patch of silk on the ventral surface of the body; the body swells irregularly, the extremities of the abdomen shrink and turn upwards, the whole body later becoming simply a dry shell. Guérin described a species, _C. westwoodi_, from West Australia; and Fuller a few years ago re-described this and named two new species.

_Icerya purchasi_, known as the “Fluted or Cottony Cushion Scale,” was first described from New Zealand, but had been a well-known pest to the citrus orchards in California many years before it was discovered in New Zealand. The adult female is a very distinctive red coccid with black legs and antennae, and a dull red body with the thoracic portion flattened and fringed with hairs. She produces a quantity of felted woolly filaments forming a mass completely covering the abdomen, which is marked with well-defined parallel furrows and ridges; under this secretion the eggs are deposited. This scale is found upon several species of wattles (_Acacia_) in the neighbourhood of Sydney, and on the roses in the gardens. It does little or no harm in Australia, as it is very much affected by different species of parasites. Several other species placed by Maskell in this Genus have been removed. _Palaeococcus nudata_ is one that he described from Australia on verbenas and cosmos. I found it to be very abundant on red clover in the Lismore district, N.S. Wales; it is a smaller oval species uniformly clothed with mealy secretion. _P. rosae_, described by Riley as _Icerya rosae_, the “Floridian Scale,” is a convex dull brown shining coccid with the outer margin fringed with short white tufts. Though originally described as a rose pest in Florida it is found upon _Hakea_ and _Grevillea_ bushes in the vicinity of Sydney.

[Illustration: =Figs. 170–172.=--Mealy Bugs.

170. _Callipappus (Coelostoma) australe_ (Maskell). ♂.

The “Bird of Paradise Fly.”

171. _Callipappus australe._ ♀.

172. _Callipappus australe._ ♀. After egg laying.]

[Illustration: 173. _Monophlebus crawfordi_ (Maskell). ♀.

174. _Monophlebus crawfordi_, when she is laying her eggs, which she covers with felted fluted wool.

(“Agricultural Gazette,” N.S.W.)]

Sub-Order III. ANOPLURA.

Sucking Lice.

These insects are wingless, with a more or less thin integument. The rather complicated sucking mouth is furnished with hooks; the thoracic segments are indistinctly divided, and the foot terminates in a single stout claw. They were usually placed at the end of the HEMIPTERA in the Order PARASITA; but later investigators consider them so very closely allied to the true bugs that they are here placed as a Sub-Order. Burmeister called them PEDICULINA.

Family 1. Sucking Lice.

PEDICULIDAE.

These are purely parasitic upon animals, and derive their food from the blood of their hosts, which they obtain by puncturing the skin with their tubular sucking mouth. It is not an extensive family, containing only about 40 described species included in 6 genera, and they are widely distributed over the world.

Three species are known to live upon the clothes and skin of unclean men, the eggs of which, known as nits, are attached to the hairs of the animal or man infested. From their repulsive habits lice are not popular insects even for entomologists to take up. Nothing is known about those infesting the natives of Australia, though it is believed that the different races of man, particularly savage tribes, are infested with distinct species of these parasites.

The common head louse, _Pediculus capitis_, is confined to the fine hairs of the head, seldom or never going on the coarser hair of the body; the pale-coloured eggs are glued to the hairs, from which emerge larvae closely resembling the adults. _Pediculus vestimenti_ lives in the clothes of unclean persons, only coming on the skin to suck up blood; it differs merely in being darker and broader in general appearance. The Crab-louse, _Phthirius inguinalis_, is a very short-bodied creature which clings with its large claws to the stouter hairs of the body. In ancient times all these were very common, and a loathsome disease called _Phthiriasis_ was said to be due to them. The domestic animals, hogs, cattle, horses, &c., are infested with distinct species.

Sub-Order IV. MALLOPHAGA.

Biting Lice.

The classification in which this group should be placed is not yet definitely settled; Sharp places them in the Order NEUROPTERA between the PSOCIDAE and the TERMITIDAE: Cholodkovsky combines them with the sucking lice and creates a new Order, PSEUDORHYNCHOTA (Zool. Anz. xxvii. 1903); while Kellogg has given them the rank of an Order under the group name MALLOPHAGA.

They are certainly not lace-wings in the strict sense of the word; and their habits are so similar to those of the preceding division that I propose to place them as the fourth group of the Order HEMIPTERA.

They consist of biting lice infesting animals and birds, and feed chiefly upon the hair, feathers, scales, or excretions of their hosts by means of stout biting jaws, but are also said to be furnished with an apparatus enabling them sometimes to suck up the blood. They all have flattened bodies encased in horny integument, lightly clothed with stout hairs; the antenna contains from 3 to 5 short joints, and the eyes when visible are situated behind the antennae; the thorax is narrow, apparently composed of two divisions; the short stout legs are provided with 1 or 2 fine claws well adapted to their parasitic habits. The wings are wanting, and the oval abdomen contains from 9 to 10 segments. They attach their eggs to the hairs or feathers of their hosts, and the larvae develop upon the body.

Though some members of the group might be confounded with the ANOPLURA, they are easily distinguished from them by the structure of the mouth, and the different shaped claws at the extremity of the tarsi. While the sucking lice are always confined to a particular host, the biting lice are not so exclusive, for the same species may be found upon several dissimilar birds or animals, and it is not uncommon for several distinct species to infest the same host.

A number of European writers have studied and described these parasitic creatures; Denny (Monographia Anoplurorum Britanniae 1842) described all the British species, which he illustrated with coloured plates: Piaget’s “Le Pediculines,” Leyden 1880, is a more important work, and was followed by a supplement in 1885; the first contains a description of all the species known up to that date, and the second adds 100 new species which he had examined. Taschenberg in 1882 published a fine Monograph, which however was never completed.

In America the chief writers have been Osborn and Kellogg; the first in Bulletin 7, Division of Entomology U.S. 1891, dealing with “Insects affecting domestic animals, Chapter v., Mallophaga,” figures and describes a large number, among them some new species. Kellogg describes a great many new species (New Mallophaga i., ii., iii., 1886–89, Proceedings California Academy of Sciences, Vol. vi.), and also gives a great deal of information about the structure and classification of these insects. He says: “I propose therefore, in the light of the present position of the Mallophaga as an independent order of insects, to rank the Nitzschian families as sub-orders, the Nitzschian genera as families, and the Nitzschian sub-genera, the genera of the present day writers, as genera.”

In this classification two sub-orders are created, ISCHNOCERA, containing two families, viz.: TRICHODECTIDAE, in which the members have 3 jointed antennae and tarsi with one claw, and found upon animals; and PHILOPTERIDAE, lice with five jointed antennae and two tarsal claws, which infest birds. The second sub-order, AMBLYCERA, also comprises two families, viz.: GYROPIDAE, with four jointed antennae and one tarsal claw, infesting animals; and second the LIOTHEIDAE, with four jointed antennae and two tarsal claws, chiefly found upon birds, but in Australia also found upon marsupials.

There are about 1,000 species of these lice described from all parts of the world, but the genera are few in number. Very little work has been done in Australia on the Mallophaga: Piaget described a species on the wombat for which he created the Genus _Boopia_, naming it _B. tarsata_ (1880). In his Supplement (1885) he described a second on the red kangaroo as _Boopia grandis_; and others on Australian birds, among them _Menopon infumatum_ on the “Laughing Jackass,” and _Menopon pallipes_ on the “Swamp Quail.”

In 1902 (Victorian Naturalist) Messrs. Le Souëf and Buller published two papers dealing with these parasites; the first entitled “Descriptions of some Mallophaga on Australian Birds,” and a second “Descriptions of some new Mallophaga from Marsupials,” illustrated with drawings. They describe the kangaroo louse, _Heterodoxus macropus_, as common upon wallabies and kangaroos in most parts of Australia. The female is a pale chestnut-coloured insect about 1½ lines in length, with the typical conical blunt head, 4-jointed antenna, and elongate oval abdomen fringed with hairs, and barred with black between the segments. The Genus _Boopia_ contains the wombat louse described by Piaget, and three other species found on wallabies. A fifth species, _Latumcephalum macropus_, is also parasitic upon wallabies. The Native Companion or Australian Crane is infested by a species described by these writers under the name of _Lipeurus giganteum_; it is of a uniform dull white colour, with an angular head, and measures ¼ of an inch in length. Three species are found upon the Lyre-bird, namely: _Lipeurus menura_, _Nirmus menura_, and _Menopon menura_. The white ibis has a distinct species, and another is found upon the sulphur-crested cockatoo. The emu is the host of an elongate dark-coloured species measuring up to 2 lines in length; the “Apostle Bird” and the “Rosella” parrot have each a distinct parasite.

[Illustration: =Fig. 175.=--The Kangaroo Louse.

_Heterodoxus macropus_ (Le Souëf and Bullen).

(Drawn from the type W.W.F.)]

When these insects are carefully collected probably our fauna will be found to be rich in curious and interesting forms, judging from the number of undetermined species in my own collections. They can be very easily collected in small spirit tubes as soon as the animal or bird is shot, but like the “Louse-flies” they soon leave the dead body, and all sportsmen know this to their cost when carrying their game any distance.

Order IX.--THYSANOPTERA.

These insects are often called PHYSAPODA in allusion to their bladder-shaped feet; but though some are wingless, the name THYSANOPTERA seems much more suitable, for all the typical forms have both pairs of wings beautifully fringed with hair-like filaments, hence the name “fringe-wings.”

Thrips have few affinities with any of the other orders, and their exact position in any system of classification has puzzled most entomologists. The remarkable structure of the mouth, which has been studied by Messrs. Jordan and Garman, appears to consist of a compound of biting jaws and a sucking style. Uzel has figured it in his “Monographie der Ordnung Thysanoptera” 1905, but the exact manner in which they take their food is not yet clearly understood. The integument is very thick and opaque, and the head comes to a cone-shaped point at the mouth adjacent, to the ventral surface of the sternum, so that the complicated structure of the mouth is difficult to study. The eggs are laid upon the food plant, and the young undergoing a series of moults resemble the adult in general form, and the distinction between the larval and pupal forms, though noticeable, is very slight.

The members of this Order sometimes appear in immense swarms and do a great amount of damage to cultivated plants and field crops. They are widely distributed over the world, and many species are cosmopolitan, having been spread with the introduction of their food plants. The group is well represented in Australia by many remarkable and striking species, some of which form distinct galls. This Order contains the single family THRIPIDAE.

Family 1. Thrips.

THRIPIDAE.

These are elongate, black, or brown, with 6 to 9 jointed antennae standing out in front of the head; large eyes; with ocelli (usually absent in the wingless forms). The elongate head comes to a cone-shaped point at the extremity; the mouth consists of a pair of jaws with a pointed style between them. The thorax, as broad or slightly broader than the body, is elongate, and furnished in the typical forms with two pairs of delicate oar-shaped wings with a simple medium parallel vein in the centre of each fore wing, and both pairs fringed with delicate feather-like filaments; both pairs are attached at the base to the dorsal surface of the thorax, and when at rest are folded down the centre of the back. The legs are short and simple, but sometimes the thighs of the front pair are thickened; the tarsi consist of two short simple joints, the last bladder-shaped. The abdomen is slender and is rounded at the extremity, and in one division ends in a slender tubular process. Most of them are minute creatures; the giant among them comes from Australia, but this only measures ½ an inch in length. Though most species are vegetarian in their habits, feeding upon the surface of plants or the pollen of flowers, a few are said to devour mites and other tiny creatures.

[Illustration: Plate XXXVII.--THYSANOPTERA.

Family THRIPIDAE.

1. _Idolothrips spectrum_ (Haliday). Giant thrips. 2. _Thrips tabaci_ (Lindeman). Rose and Onion thrips. 3. _Kladothrips rugosus_ (Froggatt). Gall thrips. 4. _Kladothrips rugosus_ (Froggatt). Larva. 5. 5_a_. 5_b_. Various stages of galls (_K. rugosus_) on Acacia foliage.]

[Illustration: _Plate XXXVII.--THYSANOPTERA._]

In Uzel’s Monograph only 135 species are catalogued, half of which are European. Haliday (Entomological Magazine 1836) divided all the known species into two groups or sub-families, viz.: _Terebrantia_, in which the females have an external toothed ovipositor (including all the typical European forms); and the _Tubulifera_, in which the ovipositor is hidden and the tip of the abdomen is produced into an elongated tubular process (most of our indigenous species fall into this latter group).

_Heliothrips haemorrphoidalis_, an introduced species, is our commonest thrips, and is world-wide in its range. It measures about ¹⁄₁₆ of an inch in length, is stout in proportion; has the head and thorax rugose, and is of a uniform black tint with very light-coloured wings. It not only infests and damages a great number of garden plants, but is spreading to our native bushes, for I have taken them on young eucalypts far away from any gardens. The Giant Thrips, _Idolothrips spectrum_, was described by Haliday from specimens collected by Charles Darwin in 1836; he described the sexes as different species; and a smaller dark variety was given a third specific name. It is a very common insect in Eastern N.S.W., hiding among the foliage of dead eucalypts; when disturbed it runs about with its wings and elongated body turned upward in the manner of a small “rove beetle.” It has an extended range from Tasmania to Southern Queensland. I recorded its life-history (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1904), where the different stages of development are figured. Its large size, long antennae, elongated neck-like prothorax, and red spined abdominal segments and tubular appendage are very distinctive characters.

The most remarkable THRIPIDAE however are those that infest many of our forest shrubs, such as _Acacia_, _Hakea_, _Callistemon_, and other scrub trees in Central Australia. These live in galls which they produce by puncturing the edges of the young leaves and causing them to curl over; or by attacking the leaf buds and aborting the tips of the twigs into irregular masses of thin woody galls; or again, the leaf is pierced from the under side by the female thrips, causing the leaf to blister on the upper surface, which gradually expands into an oval or rounded gall as large as a small marble, and into which most of the leaf is often absorbed, leaving only the leaf stalk and the tip, which forms a short tail curving up from the basal scar. Many of these galls are closely packed with small semitransparent larvae and pupae in all stages of development, the offspring of the single female thrips that first caused the gall. Noting this remarkable habit of Australian thrips, so different from that of all other known species, I forwarded specimens and galls to Dr. Sharp, who notes the fact in the Cambridge Nat. Hist.: Insects. It seems apparently to be a case of the survival of the fittest, for in the dry intense summer heat of the interior these delicate insects could not live on the outer surface of the foliage, while, enclosed in these galls, they can survive the hottest and driest season. Species of gall-making thrips have been recorded recently from Java. Uzel described one of these gall-making species, _Phloeothrips tepperi_ (Acta Societatis Entomologicae Bohemiae 1905) from specimens obtained in S. Australia by Tepper, and which form oval galls upon the “Mulga,” _Acacia aneura_. This species is also common in the western parts of N.S. Wales upon the same tree, which also bears two other distinct thrips galls.

I have figured a remarkable rugose gall, obtained near Tamworth, N.S. Wales, upon a short-leaved acacia (Agricultural Gazette N.S.W. 1906); the maker of this gall will not fit into any known genus, and therefore I propose for it the name of _Kladothrips rugosus_. It has an elongate rounded head, with the thighs of the fore-legs greatly thickened and the apex of the tibia produced into two blunt claws.

THE COLLECTION AND PRESERVATION OF INSECTS.

A collector’s outfit will vary considerably in different kinds of country, and depend to a certain extent upon the particular group of insects he is interested in. But there are some things he will require on every tramp through the bush. For general collecting the first thing needed is a strong leather bag; a large-sized school bag that can be slung over the shoulder is preferred by some entomologists, as it leaves their hands free; others carry a hand-bag; but a combination of both, with handle and also swivels to which a shoulder strap can be attached, is sometimes used, so that it can be carried either way. I prefer the hand-bag, though it has its disadvantages, and one is that when shaking or sweeping the scrub it is apt to be left behind, and time spent in returning for it; and if the scrub is thick, may have to be searched for. The bag should not be too big, for in a long day’s tramp it becomes a burden, and if string and paper be carried, galls, infested twigs, and foliage can always be made up into a bundle and attached to the bag when an extra good find has been made. Some collectors have the bag divided into compartments or pockets, which are very handy at times for bottles and tubes, but it must be borne in mind that every piece of leather adds weight.

With regard to nets, they must be adapted for the work they are to do; and first in importance comes the butterfly net. If one is in camp a simple net can be constructed with a ring of stout fencing wire, fashioned into a circle with the two ends bent down for about six inches, and tightly lashed to a straight sapling about eight feet in length; round the ring is sewn a strip of stout calico, to which is attached a mosquito net bag about 18 inches long, tapering to a rounded tip, and about 15 inches in diameter; this net is however a fixture and cannot be taken to pieces and folded up for travelling. Where nets can be obtained from dealers’ shops, there are some very neat and handy ones for packing up in small compass, such as the three fold net. The handle, like an ordinary light walking stick, is fitted at the end with a tubular Y; the base of the Y fits on to the handle, and the arm on either side receives the ends of the cane ring; the cane is shod with brass and jointed in three places, and there is a sheath to draw over each joint to form the ring; the net is then slipped on. A short stick is handy for many things; but when necessary a long sapling can be cut for a net-stick.

[Illustration:

=Fig. 176.=--Collecting Net for Butterflies showing the ring fitted into ferrule; and folded up.]

For catching wasps, flies, and other small insects a little hand-net about nine inches in diameter, made of mosquito net and a bit of fencing wire, is much more handy than the large butterfly net. When dragging water-holes or creeks a bag of cheese-cloth placed on the butterfly net ring will be found very serviceable, and will stand much rough use. A stout umbrella will be found one of the most useful collecting appliances when hunting in scrub or forest country. If the bushes are beaten or shaken with one hand while holding the open umbrella below them, the collector will be surprised at the number of fine things, large and small, that come tumbling down into the umbrella, including many that he would never see otherwise. In the dry western scrubs I find the early hours of morning between daylight and eight o’clock to be the best time for beating and shaking, as everything that falls then is more or less torpid; later in the day they begin to get very active and fly off when disturbed. Some collectors go to the trouble of having a special umbrella made of white material or lined with calico, so that the fallen insects can be more easily noticed, but the advantage is slight. Mr. Masters suggests the use of a sheet spread under the bushes, and the whole tree beaten and shaken. This method in suitable country has its advantages.

The killing bottles come next in importance, and the first and most commonly used is the cyanide bottle. An empty 1 oz. quinine bottle makes one of a very serviceable size, but any other light wide-mouthed bottle will answer the purpose. Place a piece of cyanide of potassium about 1½ inches square and ½ an inch in thickness at the bottom of the bottle, and then pour in enough liquid plaster of Paris to embed and cover it; drain off any surplus moisture with blotting paper; and when the plaster is set hard, close the bottle with a tight-fitting cork. It is an advantage to coat the top of the cork with red sealing-wax, so that if it is dropped or left behind, the bright cork will make it more conspicuous. Young collectors may get the insects covered with particles of damp plaster and perhaps spoilt; to prevent this, the plaster should be covered with scraps of paper, moss, dry grass, or some such material, to absorb the moisture and keep the specimens clean. The dead insects should always be turned out of the cyanide killing bottle on returning from a day’s hunt, for if kept long in the bottle they will often become more or less discoloured.

[Illustration: =Fig. 177.=--Glass-bottomed Box, handy for catching small moths.]

A killing bottle favoured by museum and professional collectors is a similar bottle, but, instead of using cyanide, a pad of cotton wool is placed in the bottom, on to which some chloroform is poured to charge the bottle. But when collecting is brisk and the cork constantly being taken out for fresh captures, the chloroform evaporates, and the bottle must be re-charged at intervals. When one is collecting different kinds of small specimens it is advisable to carry several small tubes charged with chloroform, and if a circular pad of blotting paper be carefully cut and pressed down on the wadding, the little creatures will not get their legs and antennae tangled in the fibre of the cotton. If delicate winged insects remain long in the moist atmosphere of the tube, their wings stick to the sides or curl up, so that it is wise to turn them out every now and then into pill boxes carried for the purpose, and any special treasures should be rolled up in soft paper. At one time most English entomologists used chopped laurel leaves in the bottle instead of cyanide; this foliage gives off a certain amount of hydrocyanic acid vapour, sufficient to kill insects, at the same time keeping them clean and relaxed so that they are easily mounted.

[Illustration: =Fig. 178.=--Killing Bottle

In which a piece of cyanide of potassium is placed, and then covered with plaster of Paris.]

The collector’s bag should contain several empty tins of all shapes and sizes, to carry the hundred and one things found in a day’s collecting, such as live larvae, cocoons, galls, eggs, &c. When hunting for small moths the lepidopterist always carries a pocket full of small glass-bottomed boxes; the glassed portion is used to slip over the resting moth, which, when disturbed, at once flies upward to the glass, and the lid of the box is slipped under. These delicate little creatures are taken home alive, and can be killed in a jar and mounted while quite fresh. A stock of small tubes containing methylated spirit can be packed in one of the empty tins; these are very necessary to keep separate from one another specimens of ants, termites, or other insects taken direct from their nests. On a long trip one also wants a larger bottle or jar of spirit in which scorpions, millepedes, centipedes, and such-like creatures can be stored.

[Illustration: =Fig. 179.=--Chloroform Tube, used for killing small, delicate insects.]

[Illustration:

=Fig. 180.=--Butterfly set upon corked and grooved board to show the process of mounting.]

When timber is found infested with beetle or moth larvae, it should be secured and brought home, where it can be placed in a tin trunk, glass jar, or proper breeding cage and the perfect insects bred out. When engaged at this very profitable work a small hatchet and hand saw are needed to cut the branches. At all times a stout old butcher’s-knife should be among the kit, as it is useful for digging round the roots of trees and under logs, tearing bark off tree trunks, and if it be jagged on one edge will make a rough saw. A newspaper or two is handy for many things, among others to make envelopes in which to place butterflies.

Specimens collected in camp must be kept in good condition until they can be properly mounted at home; in a dry country this is not difficult, but in the wet season in a semi-tropical climate both botanical and entomological specimens are very liable to damage.

Most collectors put all the hard-bodied insects such as beetles into a wide-mouthed jar of methylated spirits, where they will keep indefinitely, but any beetles that are clothed with fine hairs or floury pubescence should be carefully pinned in a box, and, unless very large, will dry quickly. Some entomologists place their captures of this kind in clear carbolised sawdust in tins or jars: I have packed small specimens in circular tins in the following manner:--First a layer of camphor covered with a circular sheet of blotting paper fitting close into the tin, then the insects fresh from the killing tubes, and after sprinkling the insects with camphor a layer of blotting paper, and so on. Thus many thousands of micro-coleoptera, hemiptera, &c., could be securely packed and added to day by day until the tin was full, when a wad of cotton wool was placed on the last sheet of paper, and the tin put aside or posted to its destination.

With regard to butterflies, the collector can generally see whether they are good or damaged specimens as soon as they are taken out of the net; if the latter, he should let them go (unless unique or rare forms), for an imperfect or rubbed butterfly is comparatively valueless. If it be a perfect specimen, the wings should be folded together over the back, and a sharp nip on the thorax between the fingers will kill it in a moment. Each specimen should be placed in a folded paper envelope, made by crossfolding an oblong piece of soft paper in the shape of a triangle and folding down the overlapping edges. Packed side by side, a square tin will hold hundreds of these paper envelopes, which can be stored in this manner indefinitely or till the collector is ready to relax and set them. Thousands of butterflies are sent in these papers from all parts of the world to London for sale, and are usually disposed of at so much per hundred.

Moths cannot well be treated in this manner on account of the thickness of their bodies and the looseness of the scales upon their wings; they have therefore to be pinned in a corklined box as they are collected, but later on can be relaxed and their wings set as with the butterflies. When we come to the tiny moths known as MICRO-LEPIDOPTERA, we find they require special treatment, and most lepidopterists take a box fitted with narrow setting boards, when out for a few days, and set their captures every evening before they become stiff, for otherwise many make very unsatisfactory specimens.

In collecting HYMENOPTERA the different groups need special treatment; and where there are several sexes dissimilar in size and structure they should be carefully kept together. Ants are always best collected from their nest, and a number of specimens of the different sexes secured and placed in a tube of methylated spirits. The locality and date should be written with a hard lead pencil upon a slip of paper and placed in the tube with them. A series can afterwards be sorted out and mounted, the large ones on pins and the smaller on gummed card. Wasps should be pinned, and when the forms with wingless females (Thynnidae and Mutillidae) are obtained _in copula_, a very common state in midsummer, they should be captured and killed together and the paired insects mounted with a check mark on each pin beside the locality and date label, so that no mistake can be made as to their identity.

The bulk of the HEMIPTERA will with their hard integument carry well in spirit or carbolised sawdust. Some of the more delicate of the HOMOPTERA, such as the Psyllidae, Aphidae, and Coccidae (Scale insects), should be collected with their food plant. They can be obtained in various stages of their development; the perfect insects can be bred in confinement upon their food plants. They should be mounted on card when fresh, but, if not, can be placed in the camphor tin or even a dry tube plugged with cotton wool, but if the tube be corked they will spoil, owing to the moisture generated within the tube. In the case of scale insects, portions of the leaves, bark, or twigs infested with the tests of the injects can be cut to a uniform size and mounted with gum or small pin on card, and if mounted carefully make very neat specimens. Many of the larger HOMOPTERA, such as cicadas, fulgorids and frog-hoppers, can be mounted, with the wings outspread, but should not go into spirits.

ORTHOPTERA, particularly the large phasmids, are very unsatisfactory creatures to deal with when captured; often too large to go into a killing bottle, they have to be brought into camp alive. If a female, it may be kept a while to lay its eggs, as they are very interesting objects. The eggs can be mounted on card or placed in a small pill box and pinned beside the insect in the box. These insects, as well as all large grasshoppers, should be cut down the abdomen on the under side and the contents removed with forceps; a little paris green should then be sprinkled inside or some weak corrosive sublimate applied with a brush; then a wad of cotton wool should be pushed into the cavity to give shape to the empty body when it dries. In the case of the larger cockroaches, which are often very brittle when cleaned and dried, a bit of sheet cork instead of cotton wool can be shaped for a false body, coated with gum and slipped in; when pinned through the cork it makes a very firm specimen. Some collectors mount their grasshoppers and other orthoptera with the wings outspread, and as show specimens they look best, but take up a great deal of room; others mount the wings on one side, and leave the others folded down in their natural condition in repose, so that some idea is given of the natural form, and the outspread wings can also be examined for specific differences. In collecting phasmids and stick insects for transmission by post or packing in small space, the best plan is to get a slender stick and lay the insect along it with outstretched legs and folded wings, and then wind soft worsted thread round it from end to end; it can be unwound and mounted properly when received at its destination. Orthoptera should not be put into spirit with other specimens, as they lose their colour, become soft, and break up easily; they will however travel well in a 5 per cent. solution of formalin; this has a hardening effect and only alters the colour slightly unless the insects are kept in it for a considerable time. If kept in formalin for say a week and then packed in sawdust they will not rot or spoil as they often do when killed and packed before they are dried.

NEUROPTERA are delicate creatures, and many of them keep best if killed and placed in papers as in the case of butterflies, unless there is room to pin them in a store box. The bodies of the dragon-flies rot very quickly and break off very easily; if carefully handled they can be placed _alive_ in papers with their wings folded over their backs, and will remain alive for several days, long enough to travel a considerable distance by post when dispatched direct to a specialist, who will then receive them with their natural colours. If kept in the store box it is advisable to impale the slender body with a bristle or grass stem, inserting it at the front of the thorax and pushing it through to the tip of the abdomen, but not far enough to injure the anal appendages. Many specimens can be pinned in the store boxes with the wings closed, and relaxed and mounted with outspread wings months afterwards.

DIPTERA is another group that requires delicate manipulation,

## particularly such species as “daddy-long-legs” (_Tipulidae_),

mosquitoes (_Culicidae_), &c. When Skuse was collecting he always carried a pocket-box containing pinned card slips of various lengths, and a tube of gum, and, after killing the insects in a chloroform tube, he mounted them at once while they were flexible and the legs not detached. Theobald mounts his mosquitoes on fine pins, which are pushed from beneath through a circular piece of cardboard (these circular cards are stamped out with a wad-cutter); the legs are spread out and an ordinary pin pushed through the circle to pin them in a cabinet. The larger flies are pinned dry in the ordinary manner, and the smaller ones are carded.

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ANIMAL PARASITES, which belong to quite a number of groups, are obtained on the live birds or mammals as soon as they are shot. When the animals are dead the parasites leave the bodies as soon as they begin to get cold. They should be transferred at once to small spirit tubes, in which should also be placed a slip of paper upon which is written in lead pencil the name of the mammal or bird upon which it was taken, the date of capture, and the locality.

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LAMP AND NIGHT COLLECTING.--In suitable localities a great haul of insects can often be obtained on a warm sultry summer night by laying a sheet on the ground with a powerful lamp on it and hanging another sheet behind the lamp; the insects are attracted to the light, and falling on the sheet are then easily captured. In camp many fine insects may be obtained round the lamp or camp fire; and during the wet seasons in North Queensland and the north coast of Australia I have taken many rare insects in this manner.

SUGARING is greatly practised in Europe; a suitable spot in a forest being chosen, a mixture of sugar and beer that have been boiled together is smeared upon the tree trunks and fences; at night-fall the ground is visited with a bull’s-eye lantern, and the insects (moths chiefly) that come to feed are captured, sometimes in great numbers. This has been tried by our collectors in Australia; but I have never had any success myself nor heard of anyone here who has had better fortune.

TRAPPING.--When settled down in a fixed collecting camp many beetles and other insects can be obtained by trapping. If in brush or forest land a number of empty jam or milk tins with the tops cut neatly off are buried, with the edges level with the surface of the ground, many carnivorous ground beetles tumble in, and will be found there on going round in the morning. If a bone or bit of meat be placed at the bottom of the trap, it often attracts certain beetles that feed on such food. In the same manner a dead bird or small animal half buried in the ground, or placed under a sheet of bark or log, will prove an attractive bait for the burying beetles and other curious and often rare species; a dead animal should therefore be always investigated by the beetle hunter, as it often hides entomological treasures.

Fallen timber always has a great attraction for all bark-feeding weevils, longicorns, and other small wood-borers that come to it as soon as the bark begins to wither. Here also come Cleridae, Antribidae and other carnivorous beetles to feed upon the smaller wood-borers, and many an hour can be profitably spent over a large fallen tree or bit of brush a few days after it has been chopped down, particularly in the tropical scrubs. Slicing the bark of living trees that exude any sap, and letting the bark hang down, attracts insects that feed on the sap or take shelter under loose bark; a number of such blazed tree trunks round a camp is a great source of revenue, particularly in the summer.

There are many other devices that the collector will only gain by experience in the field, which will enable him to obtain many curious specimens that a novice would never find.

MOUNTING, SETTING, AND STORING.--Having collected specimens, the next question is the storage of the insects. All entomological specimens (other than those kept in spirit tubes) must be preserved in close-fitting boxes lined with cork, linoleum, or other suitable substance, and the lining covered with clean white paper pasted over it. Many different kinds of store boxes are used by entomologists who cannot afford the luxury of cabinets; most of them are made of deal, with hinges in the centre; the two sides of the box fold together, fitting closely over a rim along the inner edge of one half; and they are fastened with two hooks on the outside. These English boxes made of light pine can be obtained in Sydney; they fit beautifully and are much lighter than the local ones made of kauri, but are slightly dearer. To make a useful store box, nail down the lid of a large-sized cigar box (cleaning, sandpapering, and varnishing it); cut the box through the centre with a fine saw, and then fit a projecting rim into one half with wood from another cigar box, so that the two halves fit close together over the rim without needing catches. This is handy only for a temporary store box, as it is rather difficult to get the two halves to fit accurately, and when made is rather small and deep.

Specimens should be pinned or mounted on cards on a uniform plan; nothing looks worse than insects mounted in different styles. Except the smaller specimens, beetles and other insects should be pinned, and the most serviceable pins are perhaps Kirby, Beard and Co.’s Nos. 1 and 5, though there are several useful intermediate sizes. When an insect is too delicate to pin with either of these, mount it on card, for more insects are lost or damaged through mounting with slender pins that refuse to stick into the cork, and curl up or buckle in the middle, than in any other manner. There are however many professional naturalists who always use the soft, slender, very fine, Continental pins, but they require very delicate handling, and are not suitable for the general collector. There is a great difference of opinion as to how insects should be set and pinned; many, particularly English naturalists, advocate low setting, while most of our collectors set all insects high, as the insects when thus pinned are raised well above the bottom of the box, and their legs and antennae are not so liable to get broken; all mites, dust and dirt will be noticed at once; and the name affixed beneath can be read without removing the insect. In the case of low setting, the insects are resting on the floor of the box; they are liable to damage with the least bump; anthrenus and mites can feed away under cover without being seen until the remains of the infested specimen fall apart; the insect has to be lifted up every time to see its name; while the locality and date-label is always liable to fall off. My standard height (first suggested to me by Mr. Masters to use when working in the Macleay Museum, Sydney) is the lid of a wax matchbox, which is about ¾ of an inch. A small hole is pierced through the centre of the lid; the beetle is placed on the top of the lid, and the pin pressed through it and the hole in the lid until the point touches the table beneath. The pin, in the case of a beetle, should be pushed through the upper half of the elytron (wing cover) on the right-hand side when the head is facing the same way as the person mounting, the pin coming out on the under surface between the middle and hind legs. The antennae and legs may be arranged with pins, but, during the season in Australia, insects are so plentiful that there is not always time to more than roughly open them out.

In the case of insects too small to pin, they are carded. Sheets of the best white cardboard (little thicker than that of a visiting card) are cut into neat strips of uniform width and length for different specimens. No. 1 pins are run through the cards at one end to bring the under side of the card the same height up the pin as the under surface of the directly pinned insect. To give the little card mounts a finished appearance the card used in my collections is ruled with a double line of red ink, the first thick and the inner line fine; each strip of card is cut along the thick red line, and the pin is pushed through the red band. Where one has more than a single specimen, two or more can be mounted side by side on the same card, with their legs and antennae neatly set out, one with the dorsal surface uppermost, and the second one gummed with the reverse side upward, so that the specific characters of both sides of the insect can be examined without having to remove the specimen from the card.

Moths, butterflies, cicadas, lace-wings and other large winged insects when fresh, or after they have been relaxed, are pinned down on setting boards; the body should rest in the parallel groove down the centre of the board, and the wings should be opened out and strapped down on either side with braces of paper or cardboard. The wings should be expanded in a natural manner, and so that the whole of the venation and beauty of the wings are shown. A setting board is simply a strip of soft pine wood with two sheets of cork gummed on the upper surface, with a groove between them to receive the body; fine white paper is pasted over the whole of the board. They are made of various sizes to suit both large and small moths. Most of the old setting boards had the cork rounded so that the wings drooped downwards; afterwards many used them with the outer side turning upward so that the wings were raised at the extremities; those in general use now are perfectly flat.

All these insects are easily relaxed by placing them between damp blotting paper on the top of some wet sand in a plate, and covering them over with a bell glass or similar vessel; within twenty-four hours they are limp enough to be pinned and their wings opened out without any danger.

NUMBERING AND LABELLING.--Every specimen, as soon as it is mounted, should have a small label attached to the pin; this can be written with a fine-pointed pen on small slips of paper as distinctly as possible, with the exact locality in which the insect was collected, the date of capture, the name or initials of the collector, and the food plant when known. It is however sometimes better to pin a second slip below for the food plant and a distinctive catalogue number. Every young naturalist starting a collection should have consecutive numbers on each series of specimens he collects, and keep a note-book or stock register, in which to enter any information about the insect bearing the number. These notes in the course of time will become more and more valuable, and give an added value to the collection. Many young naturalists may think of labels only as a record of the collector’s name, but the locality and food plant are the important points, and to the working entomologist a collection of Australian insects without any such records have lost half their value. The label is placed on the top of the matchbox lid, and the pin bearing the specimen is pushed through to bring the label about halfway between the specimen and the point of the pin, which allows of the label being easily read, and when uniformly placed adds to the neat appearance of the collection. I have mentioned a matchbox lid as a standard height for mounting specimens, but when constantly at work something more solid is required. Take a small block of soft deal wood about 4 inches in length by 2 in width, and just under ¾ of an inch in height; bore two or three holes through it at one end, tack a sheet of white cardboard over the top, and above this at one end tack a slip of cork 1½ inches in width; then make holes through the cardboard above the holes bored in the deal block, and you have an excellent mounting table to work upon.

An entomologist does not require much apparatus after his boxes and setting boards, but one indispensable article is a pair of strong entomological forceps with curved tips; the curved extremities allow of the pin being gripped below the insect when fixing it in or lifting it out of the box. These in the hands of an expert are as good as an extra pair of fingers, both for moving about specimens and picking up pins. A second fine-pointed pair of forceps is useful for handling specimens when mounting, or for picking up small active insects under logs and stones. Two needles mounted in pen handles are invaluable for arranging the legs and antennae when being set. Fine-pointed paint brushes for cleaning dust and dirt from the insects are used; and a pair of pointed scissors are necessary for opening the large-bodied insects, cutting mounting cards, labels and such-like. A pocket lens should be always at hand, for without it one loses half the beauty and details of structure, and it would often be difficult to classify the specimens. Later on, the entomologist will find a dissecting microscope, which leaves both hands free to work, an indispensable part of his outfit. A bottle of gum is another requisite, and different recipes are given in manuals on the subject; at one time a mixture of tragacanth gum was generally used, but the great objection to its use is that, though very fine and transparent, it is very difficult to remove from the specimen when necessary to remount or to detach it for examination. The mixture now generally used is made of clean lumps of gum arabic dissolved in water to the consistency of thin honey, with a little ground lump sugar added; a few drops of carbolic acid are added, which, though apt to discolour it if much is used, will keep the mixture sweet, and prevents mould getting on the specimens. The gum should always be kept corked to prevent dust being introduced, which would show very readily on the mount.

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CARE OF COLLECTIONS.--After the collections are formed, the insects pinned, labelled, and placed in their natural groups, one’s work is by no means finished; thousands of valuable specimens, and even types, have been irretrievably damaged or completely destroyed from want of a little care in preserving them from mites and museum beetles (_Anthrenus_). The specimens may be perfectly clean and stored in close-fitting boxes, and yet later may become infested, by the addition of specimens that have been in an infested collection. It is advisable to keep a receiving box in which to place exchanged specimens for some time before setting out in the collections; as a general rule a collector eagerly adds any new specimen to his collections, and so at the same time may introduce _Anthrenus_, often in the egg state, whose little hairy larvae will rapidly destroy his insects. Some collectors contend that they can preserve their specimens from the attacks of museum pests by dipping them in a very weak solution of corrosive sublimate in spirits of wine; but this can only be effectively done in the case of beetles and other hard-bodied creatures, for it must be remembered that this chemical is apt to affect the metallic and bright-coloured tints of the specimens, and will even corrode the pins. Camphor and napthaline kept in a muslin bag or cell in the corner of the insect box will poison the air and certainly kill all mites, and will keep some pests out; but _Anthrenus_ are able to live in this poisoned atmosphere, and will still carry on the work of destruction. Having once found _Anthrenus_ among the specimens, no time should be lost before destroying them: a wad of cotton wool should be pinned in the corner of the box, and chloroform or bisulphide of carbon poured over it, and the box kept closed for about twenty-four hours, when it should be again opened, all dead _Anthrenus_ shaken out, the remains of damaged insects removed, and the most injured specimens (if common) burnt. Another method when _Anthrenus_ are found is, to hold the open box or drawer in front of the fire for a few moments, when the pests, even if feeding within the insects, will wriggle out and can be destroyed. When once a box has been infested it will require constant attention for months after.

MOULD is also difficult to get rid of when once it appears in a box. If all insects are well dried before they are placed in the boxes, and the boxes kept in a dry place, there should be no mould among the contents, but if a few damp or mould-infested insects be placed in a clean box the mould may spread and eventually affect the whole collection, especially if the room is inclined to be damp. When mould appears, the affected insects should be cleaned with a brush dipped in benzine, and a few drops of carbolic acid should be poured on a piece of cotton wool in the box.

GREASE is often a great trouble to the collector. Many of the large wood-moths, particularly the bodies, sometimes get into a very bad state if not cleaned out thoroughly; and also on old specimens of beetles the grease develops verdigris, corroding the pins. Soaking all such specimens in benzine will soften the grease so that it can be rubbed off with a soft brush.

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS AND TYPES.

The type of a species is the actual specimen from which the published description has been drawn up by the entomologist; and the care and safe custody of such types should be the aim of every naturalist and museum curator. In the case of insects, they are often such delicate creatures that the type is very easily destroyed or damaged, either by careless handling, bad storage, or from the attacks of museum mites and pests; and at the present time, since many insect types have been thus lost or destroyed, often doubt exists as to which particular insect in the group is the species defined by the author, especially where the written description, as in many cases, is brief or incomplete. Many large private collections have been made by entomologists in which there are numbers of types either described by the owner, or of specimens he has obtained and submitted to specialists. Some of these collections have afterwards been broken up, sold, and distributed, so that it is now very difficult to trace the whereabouts of many types that do exist. Every year brings more independent entomologists into the ranks of the describers, so that our insects are being described in all parts of the world; and though the importance of types is much better understood than it used to be, the ultimate resting place of many of these types is very uncertain.

The proper place for every type is in the cabinet of some accredited museum, though unfortunately there are some museums where the collections of insects are no safer than they are in private hands, either from want of proper storage or the lack of a special curator. Yet if it were an understood thing that the types of each specialist would be placed in the museum of his country, there would be some hope of them being available for the use of future students.

The drawbacks to such a disposal of types are that most entomologists when they monograph a group intend to follow up the work as new material comes to hand, which occurs when through their publications collectors begin to forward specimens for identification; so that the types are often required by entomologists for supplementary papers.

Again, each insect as soon as it becomes a type has a certain commercial value, and as most naturalists are poor men, this enhanced value is a consideration, and it would be hardly fair to expect them to give away valuable assets. The best way to get over the difficulty would be for each museum to have a sum of money put aside to purchase all types at a certain fixed rate, and with an understanding that no types go out of their native country before they have been submitted to the museum authorities.

It is very unfortunate that many of the early and most prolific writers never definitely marked their type-specimen when it was described, simply returning it to the cabinet with the new name either on the pin or below it; and where there has been a series of the same species, and some assistant affixed the names, the recognised type may be a co-type. Co-types are very valuable when they are determined by the describer from the same species, but some writers have the bad habit of treating co-types as types, which leads to much distrust and confusion.

Every type should if pinned have a second label besides the ordinary label placed well up on the pin, and bearing the word “type,” with the date, initials of the author, and name of the insect on the reverse side, so that as long as the specimen is in existence there can be no doubt as to it being a type.

I therefore propose in the following pages to give some brief notes upon our Museum Collections, with reference to the types they contain; and also to refer to those types in private collections. To work out the location of the Australian type-specimens and collections in British and foreign museums would require a book to itself, but the destination of a few types of the more important collections can be indicated.

Through the kindness of the Curators of the different Australian Museums and many interested friends, I have been enabled to gather much valuable information about the early collections made in Australia, and their final destinations.

THE MACLEAY MUSEUM, Sydney, contains the finest general collection of Australian insects that exists, and is rich in types; it also contains a large series of insects from all parts of the world, among which are some historical specimens. Unfortunately here also the types of many species cannot be distinguished from their co-types, as they bear no distinctive type-labels. The entomological collections of the Macleay Museum are the accumulated gatherings of three distinguished naturalists. It was originally commenced by Alexander Macleay, who, when he left England to come to Sydney in 1825, had one of the finest and most extensive collections of insects at that time in the possession of any private individual. He added to this many Australian species, some of which still bear his labels. His son, William Sharp Macleay, inherited this collection on the death of his father in 1848, and added to it, bequeathing it to his cousin, Sir William Macleay, on his death in 1865. Sir William Macleay, to whom the foundation of the Macleay Museum as a general zoological museum is due, began to accumulate insects in 1861, when Mr. Masters went to Port Denison, Queensland, to collect for him; Masters afterwards went on several extended collecting expeditions in Queensland, South and Western Australia, and the specimens collected by him were chiefly described by Macleay, though the actual types of many of the insects were in the early days placed in the Australian Museum, Sydney. The types of those collected by me at Cairns, N. Queensland, in 1886, and at King’s Sound, N.W. Australia, 1887–8, are in the Macleay Museum, also the other Macleay types described in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of N.S.W., except a few that are said to be in the Brisbane Museum. Mr. Lea informs me that some of Bates’ types of the _Tenebrionidae_ are in the Macleay Collections. The types of all the _Staphylinidae_ loaned for description to Olliff are in this Museum; the others described by Olliff are in the Australian Museum. In the Macleay Museum are also Skuse’s types of Australian _Diptera_, as described in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of N.S.W., and which are distinctly marked and mounted, and in a fine state of preservation. Lea’s type-specimens of _Coleoptera_, described from unique specimens in this museum on loan, are in this museum; while all his other types, with the exception of a few in the National Museum in Melbourne, are in his own collections. Dr. Jefferis Turner informs me that a few of Meyrick’s type of _Micro-lepidoptera_ are in the Macleay Museum; but Mr. Masters and I examined a number that Meyrick named for Macleay, and there is nothing to indicate that there are any types among the specimens.

Two specimens of Sawflies (_Tenthredinidae_) described by me, and most of the types of the _Cicadidae_ described by Dr. Goding and myself (with the exception of those types derived from specimens loaned from the Victorian and Adelaide Museums and returned thereto) are in this museum collection; also Marsham’s types of _Notoclea_ (_Paropsis_), containing many of our commonest species as described in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London in 1818, are in this collection, and also, it is said, some of Boisduval’s types.

THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM, Sydney, was founded in 1836 and incorporated by Act of Council in 1853. The first collection of insects was made by Mr. Roach of Petty’s Hotel about 1835, who presented it to the Government; they were exhibited in the “Round House” near Circular Quay, where they were placed in charge of W. S. Wall, afterwards the first Curator of the Australian Museum.

The types now in the collections contain Macleay’s Gayndah Collection obtained by G. Masters, and described by Sir William Macleay in the Transactions of the Entomological Society of N.S. Wales. Some of Macleay’s _Coleoptera_ from Port Denison, and South and West Australian specimens also collected by Masters are said to be in the Australian Museum, but a number of the latter are said by Mr. Masters to be in the Macleay Museum.

Macleay never affixed a type-label to his specimen, and if there were a series of the same species he never indicated the type, so that it is only where there was a single specimen that we can be positive which specimen is the type; and further confusion arises as he presented many specimens to the Australian Museum from his own collections. Scott’s Lepidoptera (still kept as a separate collection) comprise the types described by him, and are the identical butterflies and moths figured in his work, “Australian Lepidoptera,” 1864.

Olliff’s types of _Coleoptera_ and _Lepidoptera_ described while he was the museum entomologist are in the museum collections, with the exception of the _Staphylinidae_ previously mentioned and a few others described from Macleay Museum specimens, one or two types that went to Jansen, London, in whose collection they are now said to be, and two butterfly types said to be in South Africa.

King’s types of _Coleoptera_, collected by himself, and which he described in the Transactions of the Entomological Society of N.S.W., were purchased by the Trustees of this museum after his death. Many of the smaller ones are mounted in balsam on glass slips; others are pinned and carded; and though some of the types have vanished owing to insect pests, they are on the whole in fairly good condition.

Types of all the specimens described by both Skuse and Rainbow in the Records of the Australian Museum are in the collections; and also one of G. A. Waterhouse’s types (_Lepidoptera_) and a number of Sloane’s type _Carabidae_.

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, Melbourne, was formed early in 1854, and temporarily housed in the Melbourne University buildings in August, 1856, under the charge of the late Director, Professor (afterwards) Sir Frederick McCoy. The old museum situated in the University grounds was completed early in 1864, and the collections placed in it in March of that year.

The Entomological Collection was commenced about 1861 by the late William Kershaw, under whose charge it was placed with other of the zoological collections until his retirement in August, 1891. He was succeeded by his son, J. A. Kershaw, who is the present Curator of the Zoological Collections.

In the formation of the entomological collections no professional collectors were engaged, but specimens were obtained by purchase, exchange and donation from various sources. By the latter the Messrs. Kershaw were probably the largest contributors.

The collection of general entomological specimens from all parts of the world is an extensive one occupying 31 cabinets. It contains several well-known collections, of which the most important is the “Curtis Collection of British Insects,” which was purchased by the National Museum authorities in 1863. It occupies 5 large mahogany cabinets, four of which contain British Insects of all orders, among them many of Curtis’ types (described in his work on British Insects); and the fifth cabinet of 50 drawers contains a general collection of exotic insects. Nothing has been removed from this collection, which is in an excellent state of preservation, and remains exactly as Curtis left it 45 years ago. Curtis’ MS. Register or Catalogue of this collection, comprising 4 quarto volumes, is also the property of the National Museum. Some interesting notes on the Curtis Collection were published by J. J. Walker, R.N., in the Entomological Monthly Magazine, 1904.

The “Howett Collection” made by Dr. Howett, consisting of Australian Coleoptera, was bequeathed to the Melbourne University by its founder, with a condition that it must be kept intact, and nothing added to, or taken from it. It was handed over to the National Museum by the University authorities in April, 1904, on loan, together with Dr. Howett’s library of entomological works. This collection is contained in 10 cabinets, and includes a large number of types of Australian insects, principally those of Count Castelnau, in whose handwriting many of the labels attached to the insects are written.

Another large and valuable collection is that of the late Count Castelnau, embracing his general collection of Coleoptera. It occupies 5 large cabinets containing about 200 drawers. The specimens are all mounted on uniformly sized pieces of papered cork, and in a great many instances a species not in the collection is represented by a carded figure.

THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM, Adelaide.--Mr. F. Waterhouse was the first Curator. It contains the following: Messrs. Kreusler and Odewahn’s joint collection of Coleoptera, named by Pascoe, and Mr. E. Guest’s _Micro-lepidoptera_ named by Meyrick; these were both purchased for the museum, but the types in these collections are not noted by any special reference.

A large portion of Tepper’s original collection before 1883, and some of F. Waterhouse’s specimens, were also added to the collection.

A comparatively large number, but a small proportion of the whole of the Rev. Thos. Blackburn’s types of _Coleoptera_, are in this museum. A number of Mr. O. Lower’s types of _Lepidoptera_ are also deposited here; and also all or nearly all of Mr. Tepper’s types, described chiefly in the Transactions of the Royal Society of S. Australia.

The Kreusler and Odewahn Collection was formed between the years 1855 and 1875, and consists chiefly of Coleoptera collected about Gawler and Blanchtown, on the Murray River, S.A. Messrs. Schulz, Bathurst, Jung and O. and P. Tepper collected about Lyndoch, South Para River, and P. Tepper later on about the Lower Murray plains, Ardrossan, Yorke’s Peninsula and the Mount Lofty Ranges. Messrs. C. A. and G. M. Wilson also collected extensively in the early days. All these collectors exchanged specimens and forwarded S. Australian insects to Europe and England, while the Messrs. Tepper sold to Berlin a large collection chiefly of _Coleoptera_ in 1868.

THE QUEENSLAND MUSEUM, Brisbane, is not rich in types, but contains a large collection of Queensland and New Guinea insects of considerable value; but the specimens, from want of funds and a special custodian, are stowed away, and not arranged in any particular order.

The types contained in the large collection of Miskin’s Lepidoptera, purchased some years ago by the museum authorities; a few types created by Dr. Jefferis Turner; and others by Lower, are all in this collection. I understand that there are also in this collection some Australian and New Guinea types created by Mr. Tryon.

The following notes on the Australian types that are to be found in British and other collections, furnished by Mr. J. J. Walker, R.N., of Oxford, and Dr. D. Sharp, of Cambridge, are very interesting. Mr. Walker says: “The Hope Collection (made by the Rev. F. W. Hope and bequeathed to the University of Oxford at his decease about 1861), in combination with that of the late Prof. J. O. Westwood, forms the basis of the now very extensive collections of insects in the University Museum. You may safely assume that _all_ Hope’s Australian types, and the majority of those described by Westwood, are at Oxford. We have no fewer than 55 types of the Genus _Stigmodera_ alone described by Hope. We also have a large number of insects from the collection of the late W. W. Saunders, chiefly _Lepidoptera_, _Heterocera_, _Hymenoptera_, _Orthoptera_, &c., and these include many types described by F. Smith, Walker, and others. The majority of Walker’s types (such as they are) are in the National Collection, which in 1896 was enriched by the purchase of Pascoe’s collection of Coleoptera, including at least 2,000 type-specimens, with a large number of Australian species among them.”

Dr. Sharp says: “We have no Australian types in the Cambridge Museum, and my own collection, containing the types of many species of Australian Coleoptera, was transferred to the British Museum a few weeks ago. The rest of my collections are also there except the Lamellicorns; these were sold by me many years ago to Mr. Rene Oberthier, of Rennes, and the types of the Australian Lamellicorns I described are consequently with him. Though Westwood’s collections are at Oxford, many things that he described from the British Museum Collections are in the British Museum. Most of Newman’s types are I believe in the British Museum. Castelnau’s Collection was sent from Australia to Paris about 40 years ago and sold there; the Carabidae were purchased by the Genoa Museum, and they have the types. The Lamellicorns were purchased by Von Lansberg, and subsequently sold by him to R. Oberthier. The Stapylinidae and Dytiscidae I bought and are now with the rest at the British Museum. R. Oberthier also possesses the Thomson types. The Cetoniidae of Janson are still in his possession. Edward Saunders’ collection of Buprestidae was purchased by the British Museum, and they have also acquired the Kerremans’ Collection of Buprestidae.”

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Among the many collections of Australian insects that contain types, the following might be noticed:--

BLACKBURN.--Coleoptera; a very large collection containing many types created and described by the Rev. T. Blackburn, of Adelaide, S. Australia, who informs me that “A few of the types are in Mr. C. French’s collection, a comparatively large number (but small in proportion to the whole) are in the South Australian Museum.” The rest are in his own collections.

LEA.--Coleoptera: Another extensive collection from all parts of Australia and Tasmania is that of Mr. A. M. Lea, Hobart, containing a great number of the owner’s type specimens. A few of Mr. Lea’s types are in the Macleay and National Museums; one or two in Mr. A. Simson’s collection in Launceston; and others are in Mr. French’s collection in Melbourne.

SLOANE.--Coleoptera: This collection consists chiefly of Cicindelidae and Carabidae, and contains nearly all the types created and described by the owner, Mr. T. G. Sloane, Moorila, N.S. Wales. Some of his types however are in the Lea Collection; others in French’s; one in Mr. F. Taylor’s (Sydney), and a few, as previously mentioned, are in the Australian Museum collections.

FRENCH.--Coleoptera: The owner, Mr. C. French, Melbourne, has never described any species himself; but his present collection, of which the Scaritidae is a very important part, contains many types described by other entomologists. During the last twenty years French made and bought several large collections of beetles, which he informs me have been dispersed in the following manner. “My first collection went to Leyden purchased by Count Lansberg. My second collection also to Leyden purchased by Van de Poll.” Among the collections he purchased were Atwell’s W. Australian beetles, the Diggles Collection, and the last of the Du Boulay’s Coleoptera.

LYELL.--Lepidoptera: The owner, Mr. G. Lyell, Gisborne, Victoria, has one of the finest general collections of Lepidoptera in Australia; it contains a number of types of both Messrs. Lower and Turner, and also one of his own types.

LOWER.--Lepidoptera: This contains the majority of the types created by the owner, Mr. O. Lower, Broken Hill, New South Wales.

LUCAS.--Lepidoptera: This is a general collection containing most of the types created by the owner, Dr. Lucas, Brisbane, Queensland.

MEYRICK.--Lepidoptera: This is an immense collection of Micro-lepidoptera chiefly, containing many thousands of types created by Mr. E. Meyrick, Wilts., England.

TURNER.--Lepidoptera: This collection is located in Brisbane, Queensland, and is the property of Dr. Jefferis Turner. It contains most of the owner’s types, but some of his types are in the Lyell, Illidge, and Retter collections, and the Queensland Museum.

WATERHOUSE.--Lepidoptera: This collection comprises a very extensive series of Australian butterflies, in which are nearly all the types of the owner, Mr. G. A. Waterhouse, Sydney.

FROGGATT.--Miscellaneous: It contains all the owner’s types of Psyllidae, Termitidae, Neuroptera, most of the Coccidae, and a few of Hymenoptera and Diptera. It also contains many co-types of Prof. Forel’s Formicidae, Dr. Andre’s Mutillidae, and Dr. Horvath’s Hemiptera.

ILLIDGE.--Miscellaneous: I do not think that Mr. Illidge, of Brisbane, Queensland, has created any types, but his collection contains types, chiefly of Lepidoptera, described by Dr. Lucas and Dr. Turner.

CARTER.--Coleoptera: This is one of the latest collections of Australian beetles, and belongs to Mr. H. J. Carter, Sydney. He has described a few Tenebrionidae, the types of which are in this collection.

MASKELL.--Coccidae: This collection (Coccidae, Psyllidae and Aleurodidae), made by the late Mr. W. M. Maskell, New Zealand, contains a very valuable series of his types of Coccidae, Psyllidae and Aleurodidae from Australia. It was, on the owner’s death, sold to the New Zealand Government.

PUBLICATIONS DEALING WITH AUSTRALIAN ENTOMOLOGY.

In making out a bibliography of books and the more important papers on our insects, it is impossible to notice the hundreds of scientific papers scattered through English and foreign proceedings and transactions of learned Societies. There are, however, a number of books describing Australian insects which do not come under this category that an Australian entomologist may yet want to know something about. Like all such lists, this must be more or less incomplete, but it may give the student some idea of where and what to look for.

“AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE OF NEW SOUTH WALES.”

Commenced in 1890 on the creation of the Department of Agriculture, it contains many papers on Australian Entomology, with descriptions of new species by Messrs. Olliff, Fuller, and Froggatt.

ANDERSON, E. AND SPRY, F. P.

Victorian Butterflies, and how to collect them, Part I ., complete with index, Melbourne 1893. Victorian Butterflies,