142 Transactions. 



and flitting among these may be seen the slender Gasteruption flavipes, a 

 black wasp-like insect 10 mm. in length. A single specimen of stick-insect, 

 probably an immature Clitarchus, has been found ; and these, with an 

 unidentified bug, comprise the total of the insects readily noted on the 

 shrub-land. There are, however, some twenty moths that have been 

 captured by night on the tussock or by day in the forest, and it is probable 

 that the feeding-ground of these insects is the shrub-land, where nectar- 

 producing plants are commonest. 



5. The Forest. 



Although twenty-four species of plants are recorded as growing in the 

 forest, thirteen of these grow only along the stream-banks, and, of the 

 remaining nine, one outnumbers all the others together by thousands to 

 one. This plant is the Nothofagus cliff ortioides , the mountain-beech. It- 

 is the only plant that reaches tree-size, the others forming merely a very 

 scattered undergrowth, which in many places is quite absent. From this 

 description it would be expected that the insect-life would be scanty. 

 Moths, however, are very numerous, especially in individuals. As men- 

 tioned before, the noisy advance of an intruder will fill the air with 

 hundreds of darting, fluttering specimens of Scoparia philerga, of 25 mm. 

 wing-span. The front wings are mottled grey, and when closed have a 

 conspicuous pale band across their basal third. 



Hydriomena deltoidata, of 35 mm. wing-span, an attractive moth with 

 brown front wings crossed by wavy bands of white, and Asaphodes megas- 

 pilata, a reddish-yellow moth of 23 mm. wing-span, are very plentiful 

 in the clear spaces within the forest, while round its edge one disturbs 

 thousands of specimens of Palaeomicra zonodoxa, a small yellow moth with 

 fringed wings that glance like gold in the sun as the insect darts from shelter 

 to shelter. 



All these, however, are probably shrub-land insects hiding in the forest 

 shades by day, for the patches of forest are so small that no part of them 

 is far away from the surrounding shrub-lands. 



The case-moth, Oeceticus omnivorus, however, belongs to the forest, as 

 is shown by the beech-leaves woven in to conceal its leathery case. 



Approaching the forest-streams one finds the river-bed insects becoming 

 common, the sand-flies, caddis-flies, and Ephemeridae, with Pseudonema 

 obsoleta specially numerous, as would be expected from the twig-boring 

 habits of its larva. A single Dipteron, Mycetophila fagi, also occurs in 

 large numbers. 



6. The Rocks. 



Large areas of bare rock occur at and above the 4,000 ft. line near the 

 station, but none of these was visited except the small exposures on the 

 Sugarloaf (4,475 ft.). Here the most conspicuous insect is a fat stone-grey 

 grasshopper, up to 25 mm. in length. It is very distinct from all the species 

 of which record has been found. The only other insect inhabiting these 

 rocky spaces and not found on the tussock near by are three moths of about 

 25 mm. wing-span. Notoreas ferox has dark-brown almost black upper 

 sides to its front wings, while the other wing surfaces are bright-orange 

 with black wavy lines. Dasyuris anceps and an unidentifiable Harmologa 

 are pale yellow on the wing-surfaces concealed when at rest, but stone- 

 grey or brown on the surface exposed on alighting. 



