123 



PI. 28, fig. 3 (1790), and again described by Godart in the Ency. Method. 

 Hist. Nat. t. IX, p. 139 — 141 (1819). Both these authorities give as the 

 habitat of the species, China, the Coromandel Coast, and the Island of Java, 

 I cannot say when Australia was first given as a locality, but I think that in 

 Doubleday and Westwood's »Genera of Diurnal Lepidopteraa Vol, 1, pub- 

 lished in 1850, the only habitat given for Dmiais Petilia, Stoll, is »Australia 

 generally«. In the same publication Danais Chrysippus^ Fab., one of the most 

 common of Australian Butterflies is not mentioned as Australian at all. In 

 Kirby's Catal. of Diurnal Lepidoptera (1871), the habitat ascribed to D. Petilia 

 is simply Australia, and to D. Chrysippus »Orbis antiq.« In my Catalogue of 

 the Diurnal Lepidoptera of Australia, published in 1873, I placed D. Petilia 

 on the list, on the authority of Doubleday and Westwood, and Kirby, though 

 I had never seen a specimen of it, and I replaced Z). Chrysippus on the list, 

 because I had myself seen numberless specimens from N. S. Wales and 

 Queensland. To this several Lepidopterists demur; Mr. Miskin ^ asserts 

 boldly that D. Chrysippus and D. Petilia are one and the same species, while 

 Mr. A. G. Butler 2 unhesitatingly declares both Mr. Miskin and myself to be 

 wrong, that D. Chrysippus is never found in Australia, and that D. Petilia is 

 the common species of this country. Mr. Semper also in his list of Rhopalo- 

 cera3 makes a similar mistake. That it is a mistake is now evident, and is 

 traceable as far back as Doubleday and Westwood's work of 1852, though 

 whether it was antecedent to that or not I cannot ascertain *. " — Mr. Skuse 

 exhibited a box of specimens illustrating almost the whole life-history of a 

 new Dipterous insect belonging to the family Cecidomyiadae, destructive to 

 grass. The insect had been bred from the malformed grass exhibited before 

 the Society in May last by Mr. Macleay, and then described as being ,, in- 

 fested by a minute grub, which lived in the stem, and caused a thickening 

 of it". The fly belongs to the genus Lasioptera, and although the habits of 

 this species are in some particulars similar to those of the so-called ,, Hessian 

 fly" [Cecidomyia destructor) , which has for more than a century proved exceed- 

 ingly destructive to wheat in America and elsewhere, the two insects are 

 very distinct in appearance, and belong to diflFerent genera. This fly deposits 

 its eggs in the stem of the grass, and not like the ,, Hessian fly" on the leaf 

 or spathe. He proposed the name Lasioptera vastatrix for this interesting 

 insect, the description of which will be included in a monograph of the 

 Australian Cecidomyiadae, which he hoped to read at the next meeting. He 

 also exhibited two small species of Platyyaster parasitic upon the above- 

 mentioned. — Mr. O gii by exhibited Tripteryyium aiimdattim and Conyro- 

 mtiraena longicauda, as described in his paper. Also, Hoplocejihalus ornatus (?) 

 from the Macquarie River, and Pseudechis aiistralis, a species mainly con- 

 fined to the plains of the west. — Mr. Fl etcher exhibited, for Mr. De Vis, 



1 Trans. Ent. Soc. 1875. p. 244. 



2 Trans. Ent. Soc. 1885. p. 8. 



3 Journ. Mus. Godeff. Hft. 14. p. 141. (1879.) 



* It seems remarkable that so many Lepidopterists should have quietly accepted 

 the name of D. Petilia for an insect, which in no way answers to StoU's Plate nor to 

 the description given by Godart. The common Danais Chrysippus may, in Australia, 

 differ in some minute details from those of other parts of the world, but it never can 

 be mistaken for D. Petilia, which I have now for the first time seen in specimens 

 from Kiner's Sound, North West Australia. 



