NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 1053 



those who are not aware that its food in the larval state is con- 

 fined to low-growing herbage, and that at no stage of its existence 

 does it eat cloth, furs, or feathers. A similar visitation of these 

 moths occurred in October, 1867, which is recorded by Mr. A. W. 

 Scott in an interesting paper in the Transactions of the Entomo- 

 logical Society of New South Wales (Yol. II. pp. 40-48), and by 

 the Rev. W. B. Clarke in a letter in the " Sydney Morning 

 Herald" of the 11th October, 1867. From these sources it may 

 be gathered that the recent plague was identical in its details with 

 that of 1867, inasmuch as the present visitation appears to be 

 confined to the country on the sea-board side of the coast-range, 

 and to be the result of the vast hordes of caterpillars, reports of 

 whose appearances in various places have reached us from time to 

 time during August and September. Mr. Olliff said that Agrotis 

 spina was found in great numbers on the summit of Mount 

 Kosciusko and other high points in the Australian Alps, and 

 added that he was of opinion, after extended inquiry, that this 

 species and no other was the true Bugong Moth, which formerly 

 formed an important article of food amongst the blacks of the 

 Upper Tumut district ; the reasons for this opinion he hoped to 

 place before the Society upon some future occasion. 



Mr. Kershaw related his experiences of similar swarms of the 

 same moth in Gippsland and at Western Port, Victoria. 



Mr. Froggatt exhibited eight different kinds of galls, obtained 

 chiefly in the neighbourhood of Rose Bay and Woollahra, together 

 with the insects bred from them, and made the following remarks : 

 — "No. 1 is a very common gall on the stems of Acacia discolor^ 

 but is usually so infested with parasitic Hymenoptera (Fam. 

 Chalcididce) that out of some fifty galls the true makers (Fam. 

 Cynijy'idce) were obtained in only four instances ; No. 2 is a very 

 small gall occurring in numbers on both sides of the leaves of 

 Eucalyptus corymhosa in the form of small rust-red excres- 

 cences, each of which contains from two to four gall-makers 

 (Fam. Cynipidce), but as many parasites (Fam. Ghalcididoi) 



