CCVl 



FAUNA HAWAIIENSIS 



observing Asiracid hoppers in Australia and England, as well as in the islands, one is 

 struck with the difference in habits between the endemic Hawaiian genera and the 

 others. A good many of the former are certainly attached solely to ferns, and so are 

 some of the latter, but so far as is known, grasses, which elsewhere usually produce 

 these insects in abundance, in the islands have not yielded a single species of the 

 endemic genera. Apart from those frequenting ferns, nearly all are attached to various 

 endemic trees, while one or two live on low-growing dicotyledinous flowering plants. 

 Aloha ipomoeae is an interesting species, in that, although it follows the plants of 

 Ipomoea into the forest region, it is also a true littoral species, frequenting the Ipomoea 

 pes-caprae on sandy beaches. I think it highly probable that this species or others 

 very closely allied thereto will be found on this widespread plant in other countries. 



Many and probably most of the species of endemic Asiracid leaf-hoppers are 

 attached to a single species of plant, while others affect very different species of the 

 same genus of plant, as for instance Aloha ipomoeae, and Nesosydne iponioeicola on 

 various kinds of Ipotngea. On the other hand, even on the same island, two allied 

 species may frequent the same or very closely allied plants in the same or very closely 

 adjoining neighbourhoods, as two species of Nesodryas on Goiildia in the mountains 

 just behind Honolulu. One of these moreover is found on more than one species of 

 Goiddia. Nesosydne goiUdiae has been found not only on GoiUdia, but on a very 

 different endemic genus of trees, breeding thereon. It is necessary to observe that in 

 assigning hoppers to a particular plant one must consider only those on which they 

 really breed, for adults of the winged species may be found on plants with which they 

 have no real connection. When some nine years ago I first collected the small 

 Nesodryas freycinetiae, it was noticed in numbers resting on a foreign weed on the 

 lower edge of a forest near Honolulu and I suspected it of being a foreign insect. In 

 reality these specimens had been beaten down by a violent storm, that occurred in the 

 previous night, from plants of Freycinetia overhead, for on these alone are the nymphs 

 found feeding. 



Although many of the species of these leaf-hoppers occur in large numbers when 

 found, yet they are often very irregularly distributed. In many cases scores of a 

 species of plant may be examined and yield no hoppers, and then one will come upon 

 one or several adjoining, on which there is a profusion of specimens. Some species 

 are no doubt particular as to the condition of the tree they affect, as is the case with 

 Nesosydne koae. The true leaves of Acacia koa are replaced by phyllodes and in most 

 cases only the latter are found on well grown trees. Some, however, will yearly 

 produce true leaves in abundance, and on such Nesosydne koae thrives in extraordinary 

 numbers year after year, when it has become established. Surrounding trees, that bear 

 phyllodes only, will rarely produce a few stragglers of the hoppers. Large phyllode- 

 bearing Koa trees, which have an occasional young shoot bearing true leaves, will 

 often have quite a colony of the Nesosydne confined to these shoots. One or two of 



