NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 515 



Port Jackson. Also a specimen of the beautiful little Octojyus 

 pictus, which frequents rock-pools along our shores. 



Mr. Walter R. Harper exhibited several Australian ethnolo- 

 gical specimens, including : — (1) A roll of string made from 

 human hair; (2) a belt in the manufacture of which this hair is 

 used; (3) an initiation bull-roarer with the string of human hair; 

 (4) a leader's badge used in ceremonial dances, composed of emu 

 feathers, human hair, opossum fur, ttc; (5) a pubic tassel made 

 from opossum fur and brigalow bark; (6) a necklet of eucalypt 

 opercula, all from the Diamantina River. 



Mr. W. W. Froggatt exhibited a collection of Lac-producing 

 Coccids of the genus Tachardia, containing all the Australian 

 species except one, and all the foreign species except three. Also 

 several undetermined native species, among them several probably 

 new. The lac insects are well known in commerce, as from 

 Tachardia Jaccaoi India 25,000 tons of lac are collected in India 

 alone. The tests of the sexes are very distinct; those of the 

 males are slender, thin and turned up at the apices, where the 

 opening is covered with a thin plate. The female surrounds 

 herself with a mass more or less rounded, in the centre of which 

 she remains glued to the bark. Without legs or antennas, she is 

 provided with two curious tubes on the dorsal surface known as 

 the lac tubes. 



Mr. Percy Williams exhibited a large specimen of a "Funeral 

 Stone " from Wilcannia, together with a drawing of the same. 

 The characters and lines were described, and the exhibitor 

 propounded a theory that it was probably an historical record of 

 a Chief or King of a tribe, or of a tribe itself. 



Mr. E. G. W. Palmer exhibited a peculiarly twisted, inter- 

 twined and plaited scrub vine or supplejack from a gully at 

 Lawson, Blue Mountains. He also drew attention to a paragraph 

 in the Herald of Aug. 23rd, describing a shower of small fish"*^ 



* According to a notice in the same Journal for .January 7th, 1902, speci- 

 mens were submitted to the Department of Fisheries by Dr. Phillips of 

 Warwick, and identified as Ophiorrhinus grandiceps. — Ed, 



