1880.1 153 



globose, clothed aboTO with the finest possible pubescence, but ■without anj pro- 

 jections at the sides or end, except some pale setaceous hairs on the latter. Viewed 

 from beneath, on the anterior margin of the head were two blackish angulated eyes, 

 rounded in front, extending obliquely inward and downward to a long, fine point : 

 a short, appressed, coyered rostrum, of which the brown tubular end was free and 

 turned at a right angle, and from this end projected an extremely fine blackish seta, 

 three times the length of the body, which waved about like a grass stem in the wind. 

 AntennsB short, thick, apparently of three joints only. Legs short, but being em- 

 bedded in the fat body, and like the antennro concolorous, difficult to see. All the 

 segments of the body determinable, the junction along the sides of the upper and 

 lower half-rings of the abdomen forms a continuous thickening there. I saw in 

 several instances the actual extrusion of eggs, large, pale yellow, oval, transparent, 

 filled, apparently, with fluid, in which, in a day or two, faint granulation appeared ; 

 seven or eight of the eggs seem to have been laid by one mother ; their size was very 

 large in comparison with the maternal body, but this shrivelled after their exclusion. 

 I saw no trace of a male, and that sex appears to be unknown. 



In August Mr. Parfitt found some of these Coccids on beech trees at Exeter. 



Turning to Signoret's " Essai sur les Cocliinelles," I find that the 

 author knew only by description a Coccus fagi, which he attributes to 

 Hardy, and first cites as a Pulvinaria ? (p. 212) ; then (at p. 453) he 

 says it is wrongly placed thus, and gives it as Coccus fagi, Walker 

 (List of Homopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum, 

 part iv, p. 1086, 1852), saying, "Yoici la description insignifiante 

 qu'en donne I'auteur : " Flava, elliptica, alho farinosa ; length, 2 lines." 

 Gette description convient a tous les Dactylopius, Pseudococcus et 

 Coccus :' " Signoret also adds, " We think this species may only be that 

 of Baerensprung, and should probably be placed in our series of 

 Pseudococcus^ 



Having referred to Mr. Hardy for any information he could give 

 respecting this species, he very kindly sent the following communica- 

 tion, dated June 14th, 1886 : 



" You have assuredly found Coccus fagi. I first gave an account of it, from 

 Dalkeith Park, in the ' North British Agriculturist and Journal of Horticulture,' 

 1849 or 1850. I did not describe it, but mentioned it as Coccus fagi of Walker, 

 ■who told me he had found it in some of the London Parks. The last notice I gave 

 was in the 'Berwickshire Naturalists' Club Proceedings,' vol. x, pp. 607— 8; I tran- 

 enribe it: — 



" ' Coccus fagi in the Eavensworth "Woods. When walking in the end of 

 August, 1884, with the Eev. E. H. Williamson, in the woods near Wheckham 

 Washing-well Dean, belonging to the Earl of Eavensworth, I observed that several 

 of the trunks of some old beeches were spotted white with the cottony investment 

 of Coccus fagi, which is not recorded in any of the lists of the insects of Northum- 

 berland and Durham. It was a place I knew, for I had been there entomologizing 

 more than thirty years previously. On November 5th, 1883, I noticed that it still 

 exists in Dalkeith Park, and as I have noticed before (vol. x, p. 263) it occurs in 



