Maskell. — On Coccidse. 37 



food-plant, conditions of life, are in this case ignored. Again, 

 we all know bow deceptive a thing colour is : what is green to 

 one man may be blue or red to another. Ornithologists and 

 lepidopterists have invented thousands of new " species " on 

 account of some different colour in a feather or in a wing-spot. 

 But many cases are known in Coccid study where, even on 

 the same twig, amongst perhaps a hundred individuals, five 

 different "species" could be so made because there may be 

 five variations in colour. Again, in the case of climate and 

 food-plant : if we were to imagine that an insect in a tropical 

 country on, say, a palm, must necessarily be for that reason a 

 different species from one in a temperate country on a Fagus, 

 it would be the simplest thing in the world to bring up the 

 number of Coccid species to that of the Hymenoptera, ran- 

 sacking every dictionary in every language to find names for 

 them. A friend of mine once wrote that he could not agree 

 to make two Planchonice identical "because they lived on such 

 widely-separated orders of plants as Coronilla and Bambusa." 

 But there are dozens of Coccids which are multivorous if not 

 omnivorous: for example — Aspidiotus nerii, A. aurantii, 

 Mytilaspis pomorum, Ctenochiton viridis, Lecanium hesperi- 

 dum, Planchonia fimbriata, several Dactylopii, Iccrya pur- 

 chase, &c. You cannot predicate that an insect living on one 

 plant will not live equally well on another, or in another 

 locality. Taking, therefore, these four points — size, colour, 

 locality or climate, and food-plant — I would very seriously 

 deprecate the notion that any of them (I will go so far as to 

 say that all of them) should be sufficient to induce the erection 

 of a new species. Convenience demands that they should be 

 all mentioned in a description, as a guide to other students or 

 as information to the public, so that anybody could know 

 where at least to search for particular insects. Beyond that 

 I look on them as of little or no value. 



The following pages contain notes concerning many species 

 already reported from various parts of the world, and also 

 descriptions of more than twenty insects which, after full 

 consideration, seem to be new. Some, such as the Australian 

 form of Eriococcus buxi, or the Sandwich Island form of 

 Chionaspis biclavis, I have set down as merely varieties of the 

 original types. The others, although seeming to be quite 

 distinct, do not present such extraordinary and interesting 

 features as those reported in my former papers. But the dis- 

 covery in Australia of representatives of the genus Ctenochiton 

 (hitherto confined to New Zealand) seems to be not entirely 

 unimportant in its bearing on the distribution of animal forms 

 and the connection between the two countries. 



With regard to Ceronema, the new genus which I am here 

 proposing to establish, it may be remarked that, whilst the 



