68 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Spondyliaspis Sign, was identical with some of the Lerp Psyllids 

 described by Dobson. In this statement Mr. Maskell is no doubt 

 correct. 



To sum up our knowledge of Lerp insects, there are, in 

 Australia and Tasmania, various, probably many, species of 

 Psyllidae the larvae of which construct cases of remarkable shape 

 and often great beauty on the leaves of Eucalyptus trees. These 

 structures are not merely waxy excretions which harden upon ex 

 posure to the air, but they are spun by the larva, each case being 

 inhabited and constructed by a single larva. Regarding the mode 

 of growth or rather the mode of enlarging of the cases by the larva 

 we know very little beyond the statements in Dobson's paper ; in 

 fact the entire biology of these interesting insects is but im 

 perfectly understood. I have seen myself only a few lerp cases 

 collected by Mr. A. Koebele during his first trip to Australia, and 

 which are now preserved in the collection of the U. S. Depart 

 ment of Agriculture, but among the numerous imago Psyllids 

 found by him on Eucalyptus trees there are two species which 

 are unquestionably congeneric with Dobson's Psylla eucalypti 

 although they radically differ from the genus Psylla of modern 

 authors. The lerp from which Dobson obtained his species 

 evidently agrees structurally with that upon which Signoret 

 established his genus Spondyliaspis, and it seems to me that we 

 have to adopt this name although the genus has been founded solely 

 upon characters derived from the cases constructed by the larva. 

 The following is a description founded upon characters of the 

 perfect insect. 



SPONDYLIASPIS Signoret. 



Body slender, dorsal surface very little convex longitudinally; head 

 hardly deflexed, surface flattened ; vertex gradually narrowing each side 

 at the insertion of the antennae, along the median line much longer than 

 half its width at base; frontal processes very long, cylindrical, parallel 

 porrect and abruptly depressed below the level of the vertex; eyes large, 

 convex, projecting laterally; tempora slightly developed; anterior ocellus 

 visible from above; antennae long, filiform, third joint the longest. 



Pronotum large, very little convex laterally, truncate in front, slightly 

 emarginate behind, lateral impressions distinct ; dorsulum transverse, not 

 longer than the pronotum, equally moderately lobed in front and behind. 



Fore-wings membranous, very long, narrow, widest a little beyond the 

 middle, very gradually narrowing apically, tip angulated or narrowly 

 rounded; veins moderately fine : cubitus distinctly longer than the dis- 

 coidal part of subcosta, a long but narrow pterostigma, radius slightly 

 arching throughout its length and terminating in the tip of the wing, stem 



