BY 'WALTER \V. F HOGG ATT. 



251 



Beveridge (5) in a paper on the Aborigines of the Lower Murray 

 and Darling Rivers has also referred to it under the heading of 

 '• Laarp," which, he says, "is the excrement of a small green 

 beetle wherein the larva thereof is deposited." He gives a very 

 remarkable account of how the natives collected and fed upon the 

 lerp-scales during the summer months; and he adds that it is so 

 plentiful " that a native can easily gather from 40 to 60 pounds 

 weight of it in a day." But this must be a slip, for old residents 

 of tlic Wimmera, where it was very plentiful before the Mallee 

 scrub was cleared off, have informed me that 2-3 lbs. was quite 

 as much as any one could obtain in a day; and that the blacks 

 used to gather it for food in winter, rolling it up in bark and 

 hiding it in the trees ; when the}' wanted to eat it they first 

 moistened it with water. 



Many species form regular galls and blisters upon leaves, chiefly 

 those of Eucalvpts. These first appear as little pits, which swell 

 into either bubble-like excrescences or thickened rounded masses 

 enclosing the larva. This emerges from an opening either on the 

 upper or under surface of the leaf. 



( >thers again hide under loose bark on the trunk or branchlets 

 of a tree, enveloping themselves in a mass of flocculent matter, 

 which exudes and forms white spots dotting the trunk all over. 

 These species are so diligently looked after by several kinds of 

 ants which sometimes form galleries over them that it is difficult 

 to collect specimens. 



Most of the naked species are more common upon Acacias and 

 other scrub trees than upon Eucalypts, and swarm in such num- 

 bers on the under surface of the leaves or over the young branch- 

 lets, as at first sight to be easily mistaken for aphides. 



Some of the true lerp-producing species present very curious 

 examples of insect architecture. The lerp-scales are sometimes 

 like little cockle shells with delicately crenulated edges, semi- 

 transparent or opaque, black or richly tinted with yellow or red; 

 some are smooth and flattened, others convex and covered with 

 fine hairs; sometimes they are closely attached to the leaf, but 



