654 



NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 



Mr, Froggatt read the following Note on the life-history of 

 Pterygophorus cinctus, King : — " Though this and P. interruptus 

 are two of our commonest saw-flies in the bush round Sydney, I 

 can find no notice of anything having been recorded about their 

 larval stages. Having recently bred some from larvse obtained in 

 this neighbourhood, I hope the following note may be of some 

 interest to entomologists. The larva of this saw-fly is of a dull 

 greenish colour, the head black, the thoracic segments broad, the 

 remaining segments tapering to a point, with the anal segment 

 prolonged into a long slender tail-like appendage curved over the 

 back when feeding ; all the segments are covered with small black 

 tubercles which are thickest on the basal ones. They vary much 

 in colour from pale yellow to very dark green consequent on their 

 frequent moulting. They feed on the leaves of Leptospernium in 

 April and May, and, iinlike the larvae of Perga, do not form social 

 clusters, but are scattered ; they feed during the day, and trust to 

 their colour and remarkable resemblance to the twigs to which 

 they cling to escape detection. Some larvae taken at the end of 

 April at Rose Bay were placed in a jar ; they showed no signs of 

 going into the soil at the bottom like those of Perga, but the 

 following week were noticed boring holes into the cork covering 

 the jar. Upon placing some pieces of dead wood in the jar they 

 betook themselves to these and soon all of them had disappeared, 

 closing the entrance of their tunnels with the wood they excavated 

 in forming the chambers. On examining the wood three months 

 afterwards I found that they made no cocoons, but the sides of the 

 chambers occupied were black and .shining ; the larva itself had 

 become much shorter, and the anal tail had disappeared. The 

 first perfect saw-flies came out in the first week of September, and 

 I have now a number of the larvse of this, and of what I believe to 

 be two other species of this genus which feed upon the leaves of 

 Eucalyptus, in various stages of transformation. 



