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GALL-MAKING BUPEESTIDS. ;/ 



By Walter VV. Froggatt. 



in the following short paper I give an account of three species 

 of the genus Ethon, whose larvee have the rather uncommon habit, 

 for Coleoptera, of producing galls or fleshy excrescences on their 

 food-plants. Through my connection with the Technological 

 Museum as one of its collectors 1 have had many opportunities 

 of hunting out the immature insects in all stages of their develop- 

 ment, and of working at their life-histories during the winter 

 months. In this work I have been greatly assisted by my chief, 

 INIr. J. H. Maiden, who has given me every facility both for 

 collecting entomological specimens, and in the identification of 

 their food-plants. 



I consider the latter one of the most important points in the 

 life-history of an insect, and though many of our entomologists 

 have worked at introduced pests attacking cultivated trees and 

 plants, they are often completely in the dark when called upon to 

 say what has killed an indigenous plant ; while the habits of very 

 few of even our commonest beetles have been recorded. 



Ethon afpine, Laporte and Gory, Monograph of the Buprestidse 

 ii., Ethon, p. 4 pi. i. fig. 5 (1851). 



This pretty little beetle is well described and faithfully figured 

 in the above fine monograph oh the Family Buprestidse ; since 

 then it has been described under the synonyms of E. aurijiua, 

 Hope, and E. proximum, Boheman. 



While collecting botanical specimens at Middle Harbour in the 

 early part of last May I noticed a number of rounded excrescences 

 or galls on the stems of several large specimens of PuUencea 

 stipularis ; stems not much thicker than one's finger had some 



