Ii02 AUSTRALIAN PSYLLID^fi, 



the more delicate ones are simply fixed to it by a hinge at the 

 apex, the larva being free to crawl in or out. 



All the lerp-scales are fabricated by the larva? and pupae from 

 the excess of sap or juice sucked up through their sharp bills 

 from the food-plant. This is ejected in small globules from the 

 anus, but it is quite different from the excrement. It is another 

 form of honey-dew, which when drawn out into fine threads by 

 the feet and spun into the net-like sugar lerps, solidifies and 

 hardens in the sun. In the naked species the larvae expel the 

 sap which forms a real honey-dew as in the case of the European 

 pear-tree Psylla (P. pyricola), in which it is so excessive that the 

 whole foliage and trunk of the tree become smothered with the 

 exudation; this in turn is attacked with a fungus which covers 

 it with a smutty black coat (fumagine) seriously injuring the tree- 



The Australian fauna is very rich in species of Psyllidse, but 

 from their small size and active habits in a country so rich in 

 larger and more conspicuous insects they have been naturally 

 rather overlooked, for they are seldom to be met with except by 

 sweeping among the brush with a net, or by breeding them from 

 the larvae and pupae upon infested foliage. In the British I\J useum 

 Catalogue of the Homoptera( 1850-51), Walker records five species, 

 all from Tasmania. Another species also from Tasmania was added 

 to the list by the same author in his Descriptive Catalogue of 

 ♦Saunders' Collection of Insects published in 1855. 



Nothing further was done until Maskell (6) published his paper 

 on the species in New Zealand, in which he described four new 

 species. One of these, Rhinocola eucalypti lives upon the young 

 shoots of the "blue gum" {Eucalyptus globulus), and is common 

 in New South Wales, so that it may have been introduced into 

 New Zealand. 



Scott studied the types in the British Museum Collections in 

 1882 (8), and redescribed Walker's species, Livia longipennis, 

 which he placed in the genus Creiis. It was described from 

 Tasmania, but I have a fine series of it both from Victoria and 

 New South Wales. The larvae make one of the finest golden- 

 ellow lerp-scales. 



