48 Transactions. — Zoology. 



find (as in the case of M. cratv/brdi, below) to live longer. 

 Sometimes I have had adult females which emerged in con- 

 finement, but not often. This was the case in the present 

 instance, for about a week afterwards I found an adult C. 

 compressum crawling about the drawer, the exuviae of the 

 second stage being left in the wax. I transferred her to a 

 glass-covered box, and forgot her until, some ten days later, 

 I found that she had covered herself with cotton and was 

 beginning to form an ovisac. In perhaps a month afterwards 

 this ovisac was plainly being filled with red eggs, which I 

 could detect through the cotton. This female could not pos- 

 sibly have had access to any male since her metamorphosis, 

 being shut up in a cabinet-drawer. The power of oviposition 

 under such circumstances being thus established, it remained 

 to ascertain whether the eggs were fertile or sterile. I there- 

 fore left the insect undisturbed for some months, until in 

 December I found three larvae which had emerged from the 

 eggs and were crawling about. There was thus no further 

 room for doubt that the female of G. compressum can pro- 

 duce fertile eggs without the access of a male in her adult 

 stage. 



Earlier in the year I had received the specimen of 2Iono- 

 plilehus crawfordi of which I shall say something presently, 

 and this also in confinement produced many eggs from which 

 emerged larvae. But I am unable to say whether, before 

 being captured in Australia, this insect might not possibly 

 have been visited by a male. There is, how^ever, this differ- 

 ence between the two cases : that every egg of 21. crawfordi 

 seems to have been fertile, the larvae emerging in sw^arms, 

 whereas only three or four larvae of C. compressum came out ; 

 the rest of the eggs (perhaps many scores) still remain in the 

 ovisac, and are apparently dead. This difference seems to 

 point to at least more powerful action in the case of direct 

 sexual impregnation. But, at all events, we have here a 

 positive instance of propagation by a female which, if ever 

 impregnated by a male, must have been impregnated at an 

 ■early and incomplete stage of her existence. 



I have already stated that I am not aware of any definite 

 cases of a similar character adduced by previous writers on 

 ■Coccids. It is necessary to guard this statement by the 

 acknowledgment that I have not been able to procure von 

 Sieboid's essay on "Parthenogenesis in the Arthropoda" 

 •(Leipzig, 1871) : at the same time, it is probable that this 

 author would not enter into many details regarding Coccidce. 



There is a capriciousness, so to speak, in the occurrence of 

 male Coccids in different species which is worthy of further 

 inquiry. Sometimes males are excessively numerous — e.g., 

 ■Coolostoma icairoensc in New Zealand, or Ericerus Pi-La in 



