Order VIII — Hemiptera. — Bugs, Frog-hoppers, Scale Insects, &c.
The structure of the mouth is the distinctive character of the insects of this great Order. Instead of the biting jaws (or sucking mouth) of many other insects previously described it is produced into a slender pointed tube of complicated structure, which usually lies along the under-surface of the head and thorax. This beak, called the rostrum, consists of a jointed sheath (labium) enclosing hair-like setae (mandibles and maxillae). When the insect feeds the sharp tip is pressed into its food, and the sap or juice sucked up, not by the proboscis-like sheath, but by the delicate enclosed setae. Kirkaldy doubts if the sheath “ever even penetrates the tissues, either vegetable or animal, unless these be already lacerated by the setae”; and it is often used only as a fulcrum to steady their operations.
In the outward appearance (often a deceptive character in classification) the members of this group are very dissimilar; probably no two insects could be more unlike than the typical plant bug and the ordinary scale insect.
They all undergo an incomplete metamorphosis, often changing their colours and even shape in the various moults before they are fully developed. The eggs of those living upon plants are generally deposited in clusters, and these are often very beautiful crystal spheres with stellate caps upon the summits. In other groups the eggs are buried in the tissue of the food plant or covered with woolly or sticky secretions.
They take the name Hemiptera from the structure of the fore wing, one half of which is, in the typical bugs, horny and the rest semitransparent.
The families of the plant and water bugs are much more closely related to each other than to the frog-hoppers, cicades and scale insects; and the whole Order has been separated into groups or sub-orders, viz., Heteroptera; Homoptera; Anoplura; Mallophaga.
Sub-order I. Heteroptera. — Bugs
This sub-division contains all the plant, carnivorous, and water bugs, which vary in size and shape from the tiny little leaf-infesting forms to the great “fish-killer,” Belostoma indicum, found in our water-holes.
They are usually furnished with two pairs of wings. The basal portion of the front pair is horny and opaque, and the apical half more or less transparent; this pair covers the larger hind pair, which, well adapted for flight, are folded up beneath when at rest. The members of some groups however are apterous.
Many are furnished with glands on the body secreting an offensive, buggy-smelling fluid, which they discharge when handled or disturbed.
Some species are serious pests to plant life, and swarm in countless thousands over vegetation, sucking up the sap and causing it to wither and die in consequence, as in the case of the Chinch Bug of North America upon wheat, and the Rutherglen Bug in Australia among field crops. Others are predaceous and very useful, destroying great numbers of leaf-eating grubs and caterpillars.
These insects are well represented in Australia, and many of the larger and more showy ones were collected and described at a very early date, and their descriptions are scattered through the pages of many scientific journals. Numbers of our species have been described by Westwood (Hope Catal. 1837); Dallas (List Hemip. 1851); Walker (Catal. Heter. Brit. Museum 1867); Distant (Trans. Ent. Soc. London, 1886, etc.); Kirkaldy (The Entomologist); and others in English journals; while among the Continental writers Messrs. Stal, Bergroth, Montandon, Horvath, and Reuter have been the chief workers.
In 1893 Messrs. Lethierry and Severin commenced a “Catalogue of the Described Heteroptera of the World”; three parts were published, but, probably owing to the death of Lethierry, it was never completed, part three closing with the Anthocoridae, and most of the aquatic groups are not listed. Dr. Mayr has in his “Monograph of the Belostomidae 1871” noted our species.
Family Pentatomidae.
1. Biprorulas bibax (Bredden).
3. Peltophora pedicellata (Kirby).
4. Chaerocorus paganus (Fabr.).
7. Plautia affinis (Dallas).
8. Cuspicona simplex (Walk.).
10. Dindymus versicolor (Herr. Sch.).
11. Tectocoris lineola (Fabr.).
13. Oncoscelis sulciventris (Stal.).
Family Pyrrhocoridae.
2. Dysdercus sidae (Montrz.).
Family Coreidae.
5. Mictis profana (Fabr.).
Family Lygaeidae.
6. Oxycarenus luctuosus (Mont.).
12. Oncopeltus quadriguttatus (Fabr.).
15. Lygaeus hospes (Fabr.).
Family Reduviidae.
9. Ptilocnemus femoralis (Horvath).
Family Tingidae.
14. Froggattia olivina (Horvath).
The Heteroptera have been divided into about twenty families, chiefly defined by the structure of the head and wings; these families are again subdivided into a great number of sub-families, many of the more important being represented in Australia.
Family 1. Shield Bugs — Pentatomidae
This group comprises many of our largest and most brilliantly marked tropical plant bugs, distinguished from all those of other families by the remarkable size of the scutellum which frequently covers the two pairs of wings and dorsal surface of the abdomen. The majority of these insects fly well. The head is usually furnished with 5-jointed antennae (though some are restricted to four joints), and two ocelli. It is one of the largest groups, and has been divided into fourteen sub-families. There are over 4,000 species in the family, and it is well represented in Australia. This family is sometimes known under the name Scutelleridae.
The Cherry Bug, Peltophora pedicillata, is a bright metallic green bug mottled with black spots on the back; the greater part of the under surface, edges of the thorax, and two blotches at the base of the scutellum are bright coral red: it measures ½ an inch in length and is broad in proportion. It has a range from New South Wales (where it is often found on strong-scented flowering shrubs and has been recorded as a cherry pest) to N. Queensland, where it is very abundant on the wild fig trees. Tectocoris lineola is so variable in size and colouration that it has been described under eight varietal names and has an extended range from the north of N.S. Wales through Queensland to New Caledonia and China. It has a broad, elongate, convex body of a bright orange colour edged on the margins of the body with metallic green; the dorsal surface is covered with curious green or blue patches reminding one of Chinese letters; sometimes these markings are almost absent, in others so confluent that it is more blue than red. Donovan named our variety T. banksi, after Sir Joseph Banks, who first obtained specimens from Australia. Chaerocoris paganus is under ½ an inch in length, and of an oval, beetle-like form; its general colour is red with dull metallic green forming blotches on the back, head, and sides of the thorax. It is very common at times crawling about on the rocks and ground about Sydney. C. similis is a smaller darker form, only taken about Gunnedah, N.S.W., but it probably has a wider range.
Philia basalis is one of the common fruit bugs of N. Queensland. It is slightly over ½ an inch in length, with elongate convex scutellum, and a uniform rich metallic green tint, with a bright coral-red spot behind the head and two similar ones at the base of the scutellum; the sides of the abdomen are bright red on the under surface. P. senator is a smaller, more variable form, with the coral-red markings not so distinct. Philia regia, about the same size as the last species, is of a rich coppery-red tint, with the hind portion of the back bright yellow, and the ventral surface and legs bright green and yellow. Both these species and P. senator are found along the Queensland coast.
The Genus Calliphara contains a number of large bugs, elongate but broadly rounded in front, with the scutellum forming a complete convex shield over the back; 26 species are described ranging from China through the Malay Peninsula to Queensland. Calliphara imperialis measures over ¾ of an inch in length, and has the whole of the dorsal surface, except the tip of the abdomen, bright shining red; the under surface, legs, and tip of abdomen are dark metallic green. C. billiardierei, about the same size, has the back and the under surface of the abdomen (except the tip) red; the head, thorax, legs and tip of abdomen deep metallic green with dull purple tints. C. cruenta is a much smaller species, the thorax and basal half of the back red, shading into purple toward the tip. C. nobilis has the head and thorax dark, with the dull red back spotted with black. All our species of this genus are found in the tropical scrubs of N. Queensland.
Cantao parentum measures over an inch in length, and is more elongate in form; it is of a uniform dull red tint, with the whole of the dorsal surface marked with small irregular black dots; the legs and under surface are black. It ranges along the Queensland coast. It has been reported to have attacked cherries in Southern Queensland. The Genus Testrica contains several little brown bugs, short and broad, with the front of the thorax more or less produced into a spine, and the extremity of the abdomen broadly rounded. Testrica bubala is not more than ⅙ of an inch in length, with the shoulders sharply spined; it is found upon the foliage of small gum trees.
The sub-family Cydinae contains a number of curious little black shining bugs that live on the ground and are often found hiding under stones. They are quick and active in their habits, and might easily be mistaken for small black beetles. Geobia australis, under ¼ of an inch in length, is of a uniform pitch-black colour, with the exposed tips of the elytra greyish-brown; it has spiny legs; the head is clothed with scattered hairs forming a fringe. Adrissa atra is a much larger black bug; it has pitch-coloured elytra with brown tips. This common species is found about Sydney under stones and rubbish.
In the Pentatominae we have a large number of species. They are broadest across the base of the thorax, which is sometimes slightly angulate; the scutellum is large and angular, occupying the centre of the back but not covering the whole of the wing covers. Notius depressus measures over ½ an inch in length, and is broad in proportion; the general colour is deep blue to purple, the sides of the head and thorax and ventral surface marked with yellow. It ranges from Tasmania to N.S. Wales.
Eumecopus australasiae has a wide range, and is often found in wattle scrub resting on tree-trunks. It measures about an inch in length, is a very active insect, and flies readily when disturbed. Its colour is dull brown, mottled with small dull yellow spots; these form several short parallel rows on the pointed head, and there is a distinct yellow spot at the apex of the scutellum.
The Genus Poecilometis contains 14 species peculiar to Australia. They are of the same general form as the last group, are found in similar localities, and are all of a more or less reddish-brown tint. Poecilometis histricus, about ¾ of an inch in length, is of a light brown colour with ochreous markings. P. gravis, found upon wattle scrub, is smaller than the last species and is of a more reddish-brown tint. P. strigatus, about ½ an inch in length, is of a similar brownish colour.
Dictyotus plebejus is one of our commonest little dull brown bugs; is about ¼ of an inch in length and nearly as broad as long. It has a wide range over Eastern Australia, and is found, often in numbers, under stones, dry cowdung, or dead logs. The genus is peculiar to Australia, and contains 18 described species.
Commius elegans is common on the foliage of the native cherry about Mittagong, N.S.W.; it is just under ½ an inch in length; is of a general blue black colour with the thorax and under surface yellow blotched with black; the sides and apex of the scutellum are edged with yellow; and a narrower transverse band of dull white crosses the back just below the tip of the scutellum. It has a wide range over Australia, and was described by Donovan in 1805. Plautia nigripennis is a much smaller plant bug, with the upper surface green, and the sides and tips of the elytra reddish brown; it ranges up the Queensland coast from the Tweed River, N.S. Wales. P. affinis is a pretty little green insect which feeds on rice and other plants in the northern district of N.S.W. It measures about ⅓ of an inch in length.
The members of the Genus Cuspicona range from India to Australia and New Caledonia; eight species are described from Australia. Cuspicona simplex is a finely rugose and green coloured bug about ⅓ of an inch in length, with the sides of the thorax produced into blunt spines, and the elytra broadly rounded to the tip. It infests many field crops and has been reported as doing serious damage to growing potatoes. C. thoracica is a small green species, with the thorax produced into a stout spine on each side. The head and a broad band across the thorax are reddish brown; the margins of the thorax and the centre of the scutellum are marked with bright yellow. It is common in the eastern coastal districts, and has been found feeding on ground crops about Gosford, N.S.W. C. forticornis is a larger green species with the thoracic spines red, and the dorsal surface thickly and finely punctured. It is common in the northern scrubs of N.S. Wales.
The Asopinae contains two well known species of Australian bugs: Cermatulus nasalis is common on the Richmond and Tweed Rivers, N.S.W. It measures slightly over ½ an inch in length, and has a somewhat rounded form, with a small projecting head. Specimens vary from an olive brown to almost black colour, and are mottled with deep red; the upper surface is deeply and closely punctured, and the tips of the elytra are metallic bronze. The Vine-moth Bug, Oechalia schellembergi, is one of our most interesting species from an economic point of view because it preys upon the caterpillar of the vine moth (Phalaenides glycine), several species of cut-worm, and the larvae of the fig-leaf beetle (Galeruca semipullata). They lay their rounded glassy eggs in patches of about a dozen upon the foliage, and the freshly emerged bug is dark brown, and flattened in form. The adult bug varies very much in size; the largest is about ½ an inch in length; it is very finely punctured, and is of a general light reddish brown colour mottled with yellow; the sides of the thorax are stoutly spined, and the abdomen is rather tapering toward the tip. It has a wide range over Australia, and is recorded from New Zealand.
The Spined Orange Bug, Biprorulus bibax, is a well known orange pest about Moree and the Tweed and Richmond Rivers, N.S.W. It is a handsome bright green bug when alive, but after death usually changes to dull yellow; it measures nearly an inch in length and ¾ of an inch across from tip to tip of the large thoracic spines; the front of the thorax between these stout spines is somewhat depressed; the abdomen is broad and rounded, and the dorsal surface finely punctured.
The Tessaratominae are usually large insects found upon plants, and among them are several destructive species. Among a number of hemiptera submitted to D’Horvath for identification were two species, viz., Rhoecocoris (Oncoscelis) sulciventris and Stilida indecora, which both in the larval and perfect state swarm over the orange orchards in the north of N.S. Wales and, by sucking up the sap of the stalks, cause the unripe oranges to fall. Their habits and life history being identical, Rhoecocoris (Oncoscelis) sulciventris, which was identified by Olliff in the Agricultural Gazette N.S.W. 1892, I at first confused with Stilida indecora (Ag. Gazette, N.S.W., 1901). S. indecora is of a more reddish brown tint than R. sulciventris, with the dorsal surface of the thorax not punctured, and the apical areas of elytra more bell shaped, while the venation is much finer; while the thorax of R. sulciventris is distinctly punctured and the anterior edge of the apical area of the elytra is broadly rounded. Oncomeris flavicornis is our largest Australian plant bug, over 1½ inches in length, of a broad shield shape, over ¾ of an inch across the rounded thorax, and of a general dark reddish brown almost black colour on the dorsal surface; each elytron is richly marked on the basal half with bright yellow, and the apical portion is rich metallic purple. It comes from the tropical scrubs of N. Queensland.
In the Sub-family Dinidorinae we have Megymenum insulare, a typical form very common on the foliage of the low scrub of the semi-tropical forests of N.S. Wales and Queensland. It is of a general chocolate brown tint, with the inner apical markings of the elytra dull white; it measures just under ½ an inch; the sides of the head and the front of thorax are furnished with short angular spines, which are also present round the outer edge of the abdominal segments; and the whole of the dorsal surface is rugose. The immature larvae are brown, flattened, and fringed right round with bract-like processes.
Family 2. Gum-tree Bugs — Coreidae
This group contains bugs in which the scutellum does not extend as far back as the middle of the body; the head is generally furnished with four-jointed antennae inserted above on the sides of the head; there are two ocelli; and the sheath of the proboscis consists of four segments. Many species have the femora of the hind legs dilated or armed with blunt spines. The majority are dull coloured insects that have no distinctive common name in Australia, so for want of better, I propose to define them as “Gum-tree bugs,” as many typical forms feed upon the young shoots of our gum trees (Eucalyptus). In America they are sometimes called “Squash Bugs” from their fondness for pumpkin plants. Over 1,500 species have been described and placed in 29 sub-families; and they are well represented in Australia.
The Mictinae are represented by one of our best known species, which I called the “Crusader Bug,” Mictis profana. It is a somewhat variable elongate insect just under an inch in length, of a uniform dull drab-brown, with the inner edge of each elytron marked with a dull yellow stripe, which, intersecting each other in the centre, produce a distinct cross on the back. The hind legs are thickened and the apex of the tibia forms a blunt spine. It has a wide range over Australia, and of late years has been found infesting the citrus orchards, where it punctures the young shoots and causes them to die back.
The Genus Amorbus contains 15 described species peculiar to this country, most of which feed upon the foliage of young gum trees and give out a very strong odour when touched; the young larval forms are often brightly coloured, but in the adult state all these bugs are dull brown. Amorbus angustior, under ¾ of an inch in length, has the dorsal surface flattened; the abdomen swells out on the sides beyond the edge of the folded elytra, and the whole surface is granulated or roughened. It is of a uniform chocolate colour with the antennae and abdomen rusty red. A. robustus is a much larger species, stout in proportion, with the same elongate form, but the edges of the abdomen not projecting beyond the wings.
Mutusca brevicornis is a very slender brown bug, about ½ an inch in length, usually found resting among the grass. The head and thorax are elongate, with the former produced in front of the antennae into two slender lobes; the elytra are long and slender, and the wings well adapted for flight. Riptortus robustus is also an elongate bug, but shorter and stouter, with the head short and angular; the thorax is short, rounded in front, and produced into a ridge behind, with a stout spine on either side. The body is long, constricted in the centre, and rounded at the tip: the thighs of the hind legs long, thickened and armed with a row of spines along the inner edge. The general colour is reddish brown.
The Genus Leptoglossus contains some handsome species which are remarkable for having the tibiae of the hind legs dilated into leaf-like processes. Leptoglossus membranaceus is an elongate, flattened, black bug banded with a slender red line across the thorax; the head is small, projecting in front of the triangular thorax; and the shield shaped body comes to a rounded tip. The fore legs are slender, but the hind pair are slightly thickened on the thighs and roughened on the inner edges; and the tibiae have leaf-like projections on either side, giving it a very remarkable appearance. It is common in North Queensland and ranges over Africa, India, Ceylon, and the Philippines.
Family 3. Chinch Bugs — Lygaeidae
This is a family containing about 1,400 described species divided into thirteen sub-families, but many of the latter are very restricted in their numbers, the majority coming under the typical sub-family Lygaeinae. Their general characters are similar to those of the Coreidae except that the antennae are inserted below the eyes, and the head is not so flattened and more angular in front. They are smaller bugs of more delicate structure, and their prevailing colours are brown or black variegated with red and yellow; some of them, such as the Chinch Bug of North America, are very destructive pests. As they have no distinctive group name I have adopted Professor Comstock’s name of “Chinch Bugs.”
The Lygaeinae contain most of the bright coloured species, often marked with red; the wing covers are usually of a somewhat delicate texture.
Astacops laticeps, about ⅓ of an inch in length, is a slender black bug with the head and sides of the elytra bright red. Scopiastes vitticeps, about the same size, has the head, thorax, and sides of the body red. Both these insects are common on the grass and field crops on the Northern Rivers of N.S. Wales. Lygaeus hospes measures ½ an inch in length, is of the typical elongate form, and is black marked with bright red forming a broad indistinct cross on the basal portions of the elytra. It has a wide range from China and India to Australia and New Caledonia. L. mactans is a much smaller insect, with the head, base of thorax, and the greater part of each elytron bright red. It has a wide range over Australia, and is also recorded from Fiji. L. decoratus, about ½ an inch in length, has the whole of the head, thorax, and sides of the elytra banded with red and black; it comes from Queensland.
The Cotton Bug, Oncopeltus quadriguttatus, figured in my notes in the Agricultural Gazette 1901, should be according to Horvath O. sordidus, Dallas, though the latter name is given as a synonym of the first in L. and S.’s Catalogue. It measures ½ an inch in length, is of a general black colour, with the head and two depressions in the centre of the thorax dull red, and the scutellum and basal half of each elytron deep orange red; the abdomen is dull red and clothed with short down. They lay their eggs to form a ring round a twig, sometimes as many as a hundred in a cluster; the larvae are flat and almost circular in form, of a general red colour mottled with metallic blue spots, and the legs and antennae are dark coloured. This bug is common on the cultivated cotton plants about the Richmond River, and ranges from Sydney into Queensland.
The Rutherglen Bug, Nysius vinitor, is one of the most destructive plant bugs in Australia; breeding in grass lands, during the summer it swarms over all kinds of field crops and fruit trees in countless millions, sucking up the sap of both the foliage and fruit. It has a very wide range, and takes its popular name from the town in Victoria, in which it was first recorded damaging grapes. It is a tiny creature, under ⅙ of an inch in length, is dull brown to grey in colour with silvery grey wings; it is very active and flies well. It is so common that under favourable conditions it might become here as serious a pest as the Chinch Bug of North America. The Genus is a very extensive one, containing 69 species distributed from Greenland to S. America, thus almost world wide in its range.
The Coon Bug, Oxycarenus luctuosus, is a tiny black and white bug about the same size, originally described from New Caledonia. It is very common, chiefly in the inland districts, swarming over the ground in millions. When in the larval state, before the wings are developed, its general colour is bright red, and it is then much more noticeable, giving the fences on which it rests in the day time a curious blood-red tint. So far it has never been recorded as a plant pest, but that is probably only because it is chiefly a western species, where little fruit is grown.
Family 4. Fruit Bugs — Pyrrhocoridae
These bugs differ from the last family only in the fact that they are not provided with ocelli. It is a small family containing under 400 described species, placed in two sub-families.
The Larginae contains a number of red coloured bugs, the majority of which are confined to South America. The members of the Genus Physopelta however belong to the Indian and Malay region; and P. famelica ranges from Ceram to Woodlark Island, and down the Queensland coast to the Tweed River. It measures under ¾ of an inch in length, is of the typical form, and of a general dull red tint, with the head, centre of the thorax, and legs dark brown; the centre of the scutellum and four spots on the sides of the elytra are black.
The Pyrrhocorinae comprise the bulk of this family, which are chiefly found in Africa and Asia. The “Harlequin Fruit-bug,” Dindymus versicolor, was originally described from Tasmania, but has a wide range over Australia. They shelter and breed in the crevices on tree trunks, and often damage ripe fruit. It measures slightly over ½ an inch in length; the under surface is yellowish, with the head and thorax blood red, the latter barred with white. The upper surface and legs are black, with the greater part of the thorax and basal half of the side of each elytron bright red. Dindymus circumcinctus is a slightly smaller, much darker species, the red only showing on the outer margins of the thorax and elytra. I have specimens collected near Sydney.
Dysdercus sidae belongs to a genus world wide in its distribution, and containing over 50 described species. This species is common on the Richmond River N.S.W., frequenting the cultivated cotton plants, where it can be seen running over the opening cotton bolls, and discolouring them with its excrement in the same manner as the “American Cotton Stainer,” Dysdercus suturellus, is reported to do in the United States. Our species measures about ½ an inch in length; it is red, with the scutellum and a distinct rounded spot in the centre of each elytron black. The antennae, eyes, and apical areas of the elytra are also black; the front and sides of the thorax marked with dull white.
Family 5. Lace Bugs — Tingidae
These are all small plant bugs without ocelli; the terminal joint of the antennae is swollen or clubbed; the pronotum is large, covering the scutellum; the neuration of the elytra is very distinct, forming intricate, lace-like patterns; the feet consist of two joints. They are true plant-feeding bugs, generally sucking up the sap from the under-side of the leaf, and when numerous often become pests. Between four and five hundred species of Tingidae have been described, and are placed in two sub-families. Few species have been recorded from Australia, but this is probably not owing to their absence, but because collectors are apt to overlook these small creatures.
Serenthia pectipennis is a tiny dark brown bug, hardly ½ of an inch in length; the oval body is convex, and broadly rounded to the apex, with a curious lighter brown pattern on the elytra. It comes from Glen Innes, N.S.W.
The Olive-tree Bug, Froggattia olivina, was described from specimens sent to Horvath; its native food plant is the wild olive (Notalaea longifolia); the larvae infest the under surface of the leaves, and cause them to wither and drop off. It has now transferred its attention to the cultivated olive, and when numerous will almost defoliate the trees; it has a wide range over N.S. Wales, but I know no record of it from the other States. It is a slender, handsome little dark brown bug, about ⅙ of an inch in length, and has typical clubbed antennae. The elytra are swollen out toward the base, arcuate on the sides, and rounded at the extremities, with lace-like reticulations on the apical areas; the thorax is rounded and convex.
Oncophysa vesiculata is another curious little elongate bug, about the same length; of a uniform dark brown tint; the upper surface is marked with distinct ridges and fine punctures, and a pair of large bulbous processes stand up prominently at the base of the elytra. It is common about Sydney, where it feeds upon the little native cotton bush.
Family Reduviidae.
1. Opistoplatys australasiae (Westw.).
3. Pirates ephippiger (White).
6. Pristhesancus papuensis (Stal).
12. Gminatus nigroscutellatus (Bredden).
15. Gardena australis (Horvath).
Family Pentatomidae.
2. Cuspicona forticornis (Bredden).
4. Poecilometis strigatus (Westw.).
7. Megymenum insulare (Westw.).
8. Philia basalis (Grey).
9. Poecilometis histricus (Stal).
13. Cermatulus nasalis (Westw.).
14. Geobia australis (Erich.).
16. Notius depressus (Dall.).
Family Coreidae.
5. Amorbus robustus (Mayr).
Family Galgulidae.
10. Mononyx annulipes (Horvath).
Family Pentatomidae.
11. Oechalia schellembergi (Guérin).
Family 6. Fungus Bugs — Aradidae
These are dull coloured black or brown bugs of moderate size, with the dorsal surface very rugose, and the whole insect thin and flattened, admirably adapted to the life it leads hidden under the dead bark on tree trunks, their chief food being fungous growths found upon the damp bark. Howard calls them “Flat Bark Bugs,” and remarks that they look as if they had been stepped upon.
They have the tip of the abdomen exposed, as the elytra are shorter than the body, which is also exposed on the sides when the wings are folded. Like the Lace-bugs (Tingidae) they have no ocelli, but, unlike them, they have the scutellum exposed. This family contains about 300 described species, divided into four sub-divisions. Erichson has described several from Tasmania (Arch. 1842); Bergroth (Verh. Z. b. Ges. Wien 1886) and Walker (Cat. Heter. 1874) others from Australia.
There are a number of undetermined species in our Museum collections, most of which are to be found upon fallen timber where the bark is rotting and peeling off the trunk.
Family 7. Water Striders — Hydrometridae
These are aquatic insects, living upon the surface of the water, and some are even found on the open ocean, hundreds of miles away from land. They, like most other water-dwellers, are covered with a velvet-like pubescence; the head is ornamented with large projecting eyes; the antennae are four-jointed. They may be wingless; when present, the elytra are of a uniform texture. Most of the species are furnished with very long legs. The tarsi are two-jointed. About 160 species are described under four sub-families; only three or four are described from Australia; but more from the open waters of the Pacific Ocean.
In the genus Gerris, Skuse (Records of the Australian Museum, 1893) described a species from the waters of Sydney Harbour under the name of Gerris australis. It varies from dark shining olive to black on the dorsal surface; the ventral surface is yellow with grey tints. It is covered with a fine silvery pubescence, and measures ⅓ of an inch in length. Hydrometra strigosa, described by Skuse from specimens from the swamps about Botany, N.S.W., is a larger insect, of a uniform brownish yellow tint; and it has a more slender shape.
Halobates whiteleggi is a small ochreous water-bug about ⅙ of an inch in length, and was obtained by Skuse in swarms in the sheltered nooks of Sydney Harbour. Another species discovered in Torres Straits has been named Hermatabates haddeni, after its discoverer, Professor Hadden.
The closely allied small family Henicocephalidae consists of a single genus, the members of which are widely distributed. We have one described from Tasmania by Westwood under the name of Henicocephalus tasmanicus. They fly in swarms, dancing in the air together like midges. It is noticed they give off a musk-like smell.
Family 8. Assassin Bugs — Reduviidae
This is a large division of the Hemiptera, and its members are carnivorous, destroying different kinds of insects, which they impale with their beaks, and from which they suck the blood; many can give a painful stab with the stout beak if handled carelessly. The head is long, narrowed behind, and freely movable; the rostrum or beak is short, stout, and is curved under the head, not extending far under the thorax; the antennae are long, slender towards the tips; the legs are long, slender, and often hairy; the elytron consists of three divisions. Some species are wingless. They exhibit much variety in size and colouration, and their shape is often adapted to their habits. The large immature forms of one undetermined species, found plentifully about Maitland, N.S.W., hides in the sand under the shelter of a log or stone; each covers its back with bits of sand or dirt, and, thus disguised, it lies in wait for its prey. Over 2,000 species are described from all parts of the world, and they are grouped into 14 sub-families.
The Emesinae contain a very curious group of slender grey bugs with long legs. They might at first sight be mistaken for “daddy longlegs” or “crane-flies”; and are found, too, in similar situations, viz., resting on tree trunks or under the cover of logs and bark; and they probably live chiefly on these long-legged flies. Gardena australis is of a uniform brown tint, mottled on the legs and elytra with grey. It is of the usual slender form, with elongate hairy legs. It and several similar but undetermined species are common about Sydney.
Opistoplatys australasiae, representing the small sub-family Tribelocephalidae, was described and figured by Westwood in 1859; it is not uncommon on tree trunks about the Richmond River, N.S.W. It measures over ½ an inch in length, and is flattened on the dorsal surface; the abdomen is elongate, and rounded at the apex; its general colour is dull chocolate brown, with the centre of the back slightly pubescent.
In the group Holoptilinae are some species with feather-like hind legs, the tibiae being densely clothed with long dark hairs. They are usually found on the trunks of dead trees, under the shelter of the drying detached bark, where they are found in all stages of development; they probably feed upon the small insects that come there for shelter. Horvath has identified those I have sent him as Ptilocnemus femoralis, a new species, though there are four other species described from Australia. This new species measures over ⅓ of an inch, and has the head, thorax, and joints of the legs dull yellow; the under surface and apical areas of the elytra are marbled with black and brown; the antennae, head, thorax and legs are fringed with long black hairs, which on the hind tibiae are so thick as to give the appearance of a feather or brush. Aradellus cygnalis, figured and described by Westwood (Thesaurus Ent. 1874), is also found hiding under dead bark on tree trunks. Some specimens were taken at Gunnedah, N.S.W., but I also have a closely allied, if not a new species, from Bathurst, N.S.W. It measures slightly over ⅙ of an inch in length, is of a general blackish brown colour, with yellowish legs, and the elytra are black, mottled with blotches of white; the curious thickened antennae and legs are fringed with short stout, bristle-like hairs.
The Acanthaspinae are larger slender-legged bugs, well represented in Australia. The genus Sphedanocores contains several distinct species with a wide range. S. distinctus measures over ¼ of an inch in length, and is mottled and barred with dark orange and black; the head is turned downwards and the rostrum is stout; the thorax is very rugose. Reduvius personatus is a cosmopolitan species that takes up its quarters in the house, covering itself with bits of dirt and feeding upon the common bed bug. It is recorded both from Australia and Tasmania. The larval form of an allied bug has the broad back concave, and covers itself with particles of sand; it rests under the shelter of logs and stones where it lurks during the day. Reduvius rivulosus is a large bug measuring ¾ of an inch in length; it is of a general dull brown colour with the elytra mottled with dull yellow, while the whole insect is clothed with fine woolly hairs, denser upon the legs. It comes from the Shoalhaven district, N.S.W.
The Piratinae comprise some of the so-called “Assassin bugs”; in colour most of them are dark brown or black, marked with dull yellow; they hide under stones in the daytime, and often in summer come flying to the lights in the house at night, when, if carelessly handled they can inflict a very severe stab with the beak. Pirates ephippiger is one of our largest species, measuring over ¾ of an inch in length. It is of a uniform dull black, with the stout legs reddish brown in colour, and there is a heart-shaped patch of bright yellow behind the scutellum. The prothorax is narrow, smooth and rounded, with a constriction separating it distinctly from the broader mesothorax which is also smooth and rounded. P. flavopictus is a very much smaller species, black in colour, with the yellow blotch behind the scutellum. The whole insect is clothed with fine hairs. It is a common species in New South Wales, and has a wide range over the southern part of the continent. Twelve other species of this large genus are described from Australia and Tasmania.
The Harpactorinae is the largest division of this family, and comprises both the large spiny “assassin bugs” that crawl about among the foliage or hunt over the tree trunks, and some typical forms, most plentiful in tropical countries.
Havinthus depressus is a small, flat, dark brown species, under ½ an inch in length, with the outer margins of the body mottled with dull red. H. rufovarius is a larger bug of a general black colour, with the head, front of thorax, legs, bases of the elytra, and under surface of the abdomen marked with deep red. The body is rugose and clothed with short stiff hairs. It has a wide range over Australia; and a very large variety, with blood red markings, from Kalgoorlie (W.A.), measures over an inch in length.
The members of the Genus Gminatus are peculiar to Australia, and are found hunting over tree trunks and flowers. The body is somewhat constricted behind the thorax, broadening towards the rounded apex. Gminatus nigroscutellatus, over ½ an inch in length, is of a general bright red colour, with the legs and scutellum black, and the apical areas of the elytra rich metallic bronze. The dorsal surfaces of the head and thorax are ornamented with a number of tubercles or spines. G. australis, slightly smaller and more slender than the previous one, differs in having the head black; the prothorax black and furnished with two pairs of black spines, and the shorter spines in the rest of the thorax tipped with black. The Bee Killer, Pristhesancus papuensis, is a large brown bug, nearly 1¼ inches in length, and thickly clothed with short buff hairs. The outer edge of the thorax is produced into erect blunt tubercles, seven in number, forming an angle on the outer margins. The dorsal surface of the abdomen is very concave; the folded elytra lie sunk well below the sides of abdomen, which are flanged and raised.
It has been observed sitting on the tassels of maize cobs, catching and sucking the blood out of hive bees as they come for the pollen. It is common on the Tweed River, N.S.W., and in Queensland.
The members of the Genus Helonotus are similar large carnivorous bugs. Specimens are recorded from Cape York (Queensland), and the tropical scrubs of New Guinea.
Family 9. Bed Bugs — Cimicidae
The family to which the common bed bug of unsavoury reputation belongs, is a very small one, comprising only a few genera and about a dozen species. They have no ocelli; the wing cases are short and do not reach to the tip of the abdomen; the head is short, with the rostrum when at rest fitting into a groove beneath it.
Cimex lectularius, the common house bug, is supposed to have come originally from Asia into Europe, and thence transported over the world. Several other species are found in Europe and America, another in India, and indigenous species both in Chili and the Isle of Bourbon. A fossil bug has been found in the Lower Tertiary beds in Scotland which is said to be very similar if not identical with the present household pest. Kirkaldy has recently created the Genus Klinophilos to contain our common bed bug, though it has always been considered to be Linne’s type of the Genus Cimex.
Family 10. Leaf Bugs — Capsidae
These are all small plant-eating bugs of somewhat delicate structure, and form a family of considerable size; over 2,000 species having been recorded from all parts of the world. Several species are well known pests in India and Ceylon, and a few in America are said to prey on small insects. Very little attention has been paid to the collection of these small bugs in this country, but Mr. Kirkaldy informs me that 35 species have been described from Australia, chiefly by Walker, Reuter, Distant and himself.
They have no ocelli; the antenna is four jointed, with the second joint usually very long; the scutellum is triangular and very small; the elytra and wings are large, the former remarkable for having only two cells in each apical area; the female is furnished with a well-defined ovipositor. In his “Memoir upon the Rhynchotal family Capsidae” (Trans. Ent. Soc. London 1902), Kirkaldy lists 6 described species, and also defines 5 new species which were collected at Alexandria, Victoria. Eurybrochis zanna is a mottled reddish brown insect, darkest towards the extremity, measuring under ¼ of an inch in length, and of the usual form. Austomiris viridissimus is a longer, more slender bug of a general greenish tint. Zanessa rubrovariegata is again a little longer, of a uniform brown tint marked with red on the elytra.
Stal (Eugenie’s Resa Novara 1859) described 3 Australian species.
Family 11. Water Bugs — Cryptocerata
The several families included in this group comprise a number of aquatic or semi-aquatic bugs.
The Galgulidae, known as “Sand-bugs,” are curious little creatures distinguished from the others in having ocelli. They are very short and broad in form, with projecting eyes, and in general appearance each suggests a miniature crab. They have short four jointed antennae situated below the eyes, and are furnished with legs well adapted for running on the ground. They are found on the edges of swamps or creeks, and feed upon different kinds of small insects. In colour they are usually of a uniform dull brown to black; the upper surface is generally much roughened. Never moving unless touched, they trust to their sordid colours to escape detection, for as they match the ground so well, they are difficult to find.
Mononyx annulipes, one of our commonest species, is about ¼ of an inch in length; is of a uniform dirty brown tint, with the legs and under surface dull yellow; the body is very rugose and fringed on the outer edges with fine bristles. Montandon has described several other Australian species (Bulletin, Societé des Sciences, Roumania, 1899).
The Nepidae are popularly known as “water scorpions” on account of the curious tail appendages projecting from the tip of the abdomen. They live in ponds, and feed upon different water insects, attaching their eggs to the leaves of the plants. They have the wing covers folded closely over the back protecting the wings from the water, and fly rapidly from pool to pool when the water dries up. There are many species found in Australia, most of which have a wide range. Rantara varipes, under 1 inch in length, has a tail about as long again as the body, and is of a light yellowish brown colour. It might be likened to a mantis, with its slender form and fore pair of legs furnished with spines on the inner edges to hold its prey. The other legs are long and slender with curved claws at the extremities.
In the Genus Nepa the insects have the head and body flattened; the elytra cover the wings; the abdomen is broadly rounded at the extremity, terminating in a pair of long slender bristles. The beak curved under the head is large and stout; the eyes are large, the fore legs are spined, and the other legs furnished with a pair of slender curved claws.
Nepa tristis, measuring about 1 inch to the tip of the body, is of the usual form and dull brown colour, with the upper surface of the abdomen showing bright red when the wings are expanded. It is found in the bottom of ponds crawling about among the weeds.
Family 12. Fish-killers — Belostomidae
In the typical genus of this family we have some of the largest known Hemiptera, measuring up to 3 inches in length and broad in proportion. They are aquatic, generally living in still waters, feeding on small fish which they capture with their stout spined legs; they play havoc with the small fry in a pond, and are popularly known in consequence as “Fish-killers.”
The body is broad, but flattened on the dorsal surface, coming to a rounded point at the apex; the well developed wings are folded beneath the horny elytra; the whole shape being well adapted to the life they lead. In summer time they often leave their ponds, and, attracted by the light, come flying to the windows.
Belostoma indicum has a wide range from Southern India to Australia; it measures slightly under 3 inches in length, and is of a uniform dark brown colour. The large curved beak bent under the head, projecting eyes, and great spined fore legs show its carnivorous propensities; the middle and hind legs are fringed with delicate swimming hairs, and terminate in a pair of fine claws. Unlike most of the other aquatic hemiptera, the abdomen terminates in an oval tip without any anal appendages.
Sharp speaking of this family (Insects Pt. II. p. 567) says: “In the waters of the warm regions of the continents of both the Old and New Worlds they are common insects, but as yet they have not been found in Australia.” However, Mayr records it from Australia, “Die Belostomiden 1871” (Verh. Z. C. Gesell, Wien); and I have a specimen from Port Darwin, Northern Territory, and also a number of specimens from Southern Queensland.
Sphaeroderma equis is a curious oval-shaped water-bug that crawls about among the mud and water weeds in water-holes and creeks; it has a very wide range, probably all over Australia; the female has the curious habit of carrying her eggs stuck upon her back in a regular sheet covering the whole of the elytra. It is of a uniform shining brown colour, and measures ¾ of an inch in length; the head is smaller than that of B. indicum, with the eyes not so prominent and angular.
Family 13. Back-Swimmers — Notonectidae
These water-bugs have oval convex bodies and always swim with the belly upwards; their eyes are very large, situated on the sides of the head, the latter inserted into the prothorax, which overlaps it. The front legs are shortest, the fore tarsi not flattened but furnished with two claws. Their bodies are provided with long hairs which enable them to carry an air supply about with them. They are very active insects, and can be often observed in our water-holes and ponds swimming beneath the water, or coming to the surface and raising the tip of the body to obtain a fresh supply of air, when they can be easily captured with a hand net.
They insert their eggs in the stems of water plants, which the female pierces with her sharp ovipositor; and some European species are known to hibernate in the mud at the bottom of the pools and water-holes.
Several species are common in our ponds and creeks, and are savage little creatures destroying many other aquatic insects, and even small fish.
Enithares bergrothi is our common species with a very wide range over Australia. In their larval state they are silvery white in appearance, but as the elytra develop and cover the back they change to dark brown, mottled, shining creatures, with the body measuring about ⅓ of an inch in length.
Family 14. Water-Boatmen — Corixidae
The members of the family Corixidae differ from the “Back-swimmers,” though both are often called “Water-Boatmen,” in having the fore tarsi flattened, fringed with hairs on the edges, but without any claws, while the head overlaps the thorax. They swim the opposite way (with the back upwards), and are flattened on the ventral surface. One or more species may be often captured with a net in the same situations as the members of the former group.
Corixa eurynome, described by Kirkaldy, is our common species found in creeks and water-holes all over Australia. It measures over ⅓ of an inch in length, with the scythe-shaped hind legs projecting behind; it is of a uniform chocolate brown colour on the dorsal surface, except the space between the eyes, which with the legs and ventral surface are dull yellow. The large flattened lead-coloured eyes are almost triangular.
Sub-Order II — Homoptera
This sub-division was formed to include some families of haustellate insects which, though closely related to the true plant bugs, have well-defined characteristics that bring them into a natural Sub-Order of their own. They all have the typical suctorial mouth, but the front of the head is much inflexed so as to be in contact with the coxae. The front pair of wings are not true elytra, being generally membranous, and are usually referred to as tegmina. Some, like the aphids, have both pairs of wings delicate and transparent; while in the scale insects, the females are always wingless, and the male is provided with a single, imperfectly veined pair only. When at rest, the wings in the typical homoptera are folded over the back like a roof, forming a ridge. All the families are well represented in Australia, except the Aphidae, of which no indigenous species have been recorded, the Psyllidae with similar habits taking their place, at any rate in our western scrubs. Like true hemiptera, they each undergo an incomplete metamorphosis, some moulting many times before the final ecdysis; and all feed in the immature and perfect state on the sap of plants.
Kirkaldy has recently described about 200 new species of the families Fulgoridae, Membracidae, Cercopidae, and Jassidae (Leaf Hoppers and their Natural Enemies Bulletin I. pt. IX., Hawaii 1905), collected by Messrs. Koebele and Perkins chiefly in Queensland. In his classification based on Hanson’s (Ent. Tedssker xi. 1890) he divides them into 8 families and creates 76 new genera.
Family 1. Cicadas — Cicadidae
The most familiar sound in the summer months in Australia, particularly along the coastal districts is the harsh, incessant screech of the cicadas; the hotter the day the shriller the tone, and from the first week in November to the end of January it is more or less constant. They are too well known to need much description, but it might be remarked that it is very unfortunate that they are commonly called “locusts” for, strictly speaking, the term “locust” should only be applied to the short-horned grasshoppers belonging to a different order, Family Acridiidae.
Family Cicadidae.
4. Cyclochila australasiae (Donovan).
1. Pupa on emergence from the ground.
2. Pupa casting its skin.
3. Fore-leg of pupa.
5. Ovipositor and sheath separated.
6. Side view of ovipositor.
7. Ovipositor viewed from above.
8. Cross section of ovipositor, showing cutting saws and egg passages.
The head is broad, more or less truncate in front, with prominent eyes on the sides, and small gem-like ocelli arranged triangularly on the summit; each antenna consists of one stout basal joint surmounted with several (usually four) segments forming a bristle. The tegmina or fore wings, larger and stouter than the hind pair, are furnished with thickened veins, and are frequently mottled with brown, usually forming bands or spots on the cross nervures. The swollen fore legs are spined; the thorax is well developed; and while the large hollow abdomen of the male is pointed at the extremity, that of the female (usually the larger insect) is furnished with a horny retractile ovipositor, which is adapted for cutting the bark of the twig, wherein she deposits her eggs.
The complicated musical apparatus of the male is situated between the thorax and base of the abdomen, and consists of a large plate on either side attached to, but extending over the basal portion of the abdomen (these plates are often called the drums or opercula); beneath in the abdomen is a cavity formed into two cells within which are two thin glass-like plates called mirrors; above these mirrors are bundles of muscles which lead to two membranes formed like kettle-drums; each membrane has a concave and a convex surface, the latter folded and full of ridges.
Haswell (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1886) describes it thus: “The loud shrill note emitted by the insect is the result of a quick succession of crackling sounds produced by the movement of the stiff membrane with its horny ribs, through the agency of the muscle. Under ordinary circumstances, the sounds follow one another with sufficient quickness to produce a continuous note, and this is effected not by the contraction of the muscle as a whole, but by the successive contraction of individual fasciculi (different filaments forming the whole), all of which act on the horny plate, and thus the movements of the muscle on the tendon during the production of the note resemble those of the hammer-board of a piano when a number of keys are being struck in quick succession.”
The life history of cicadas has attracted much attention; on first emerging from the eggs they might easily be taken for minute shrimps, apparently all heads and claws. They cast themselves off the branch and, falling to the ground, burrow into the soil and follow down the roots, where they feed upon the sap and undergo a series of moults. We do not know the length of time that they take to develop underground, but the adults of several of our large species, though each year more or less in evidence, appear in greater numbers every third year, so that it is probable that three years is about the cycle of their subterranean existence. The grotesque pupa burrowing upward when fully developed, bores a vertical shaft often several feet long before it comes to the surface, when it crawls out and climbs up the nearest tree trunk or fence, where it clings till the skin splits down the back, and the perfect cicada emerges. The dry brown pupal shells firmly attached by the sharp claws remain long after the inmates have departed.
Cicadas are well represented in our insect fauna, a number of large handsome species being found along the coastal forest country, and many smaller ones in the interior. The large ones attracted the attention of collectors at a very early date: Donovan, Leach, and Guérin described several, and Walker (British Museum Catalogue, Homoptera 1850) added a number of new species from material in the Museum collections, but his localities and descriptions are very vague and unsatisfactory. Since then Distant between 1882 and the present date has greatly increased our list of described species. In 1904 Dr. Goding and I monographed the Australian Cicadas (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W.), describing a number of new forms, and bringing the number up to 120 species in 18 genera. Last year (1906), the Trustees of the British Museum issued a “Synonymic Catalogue of Homoptera, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Family Coccidae.
1. Apiomorpha urnalis (Tepper).
2. Frenchia semiocculta (Mask.).
4. Frenchia casuarinae (Mask.).
3. Galls of Buprestid beetles (Ethon corpulentum, Bohem.).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Family Coccidae.
1. Apiomorpha duplex (Schr.). ♀ Gall.
2. Sphaerococcus leptospermi (Mask.). ♀ Galls.
3. Cylindrococcus spiniferus (Mask.). ♀ Galls.
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.
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.
Figs. 170–172.—Mealy Bugs.
170. Callipappus (Coelostoma) australe (Maskell). ♂.
The “Bird of Paradise Fly.”
171. Callipappus australe. ♀.
172. Callipappus australe. ♀. After egg laying.
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.
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.