THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 107 



feel for mere technical descriptions of new species. In iny 

 early days I had an overweaning weakness for compiling 

 such descriptions, and I contributed largely to the number 

 of names cast loose upon the world of Science, without 

 method, and, I fear, without benefit to others. The former 

 volume of the 'Entomologist' was the great repository of my 

 descriptions, and Australia was the continent whence my 

 materials were derived. All this is changed, and I have now 

 much more pleasure in observing the living than in classify- 

 ing the dead : hence the preference I feel for those three of 

 the papers I have enumerated, which relate almost exclusively 

 to economy ; and first Mr. Schrader's paper on the gall- 

 making CoccidtB. 



This may almost be considered virgin soil for the Ento- 

 mologist : in Europe, and especially in Britain, we know 

 almost nothing of galls manufactured, or rather caused, by 

 Cocci ; whether they exist is a question of some consider- 

 able difficulty, but it is quite certain we have not studied 

 them. Indeed Mr. Schrader himself does not appear to 

 have expected the result he obtained from an examination of 

 the Australian galls. " When I came to the colony," he 

 writes, " I u;as astonished to find so great a number and 

 variety of galls. At first 1 thought they were produced by 

 Cynipidae, but I soon ascertained there were comparatively 

 few hymenopterous gall-makers here. Most of the Hyme- 

 noptera which I found in galls were parasites upon gall- 

 making Diptera and Homoptera. The Coccus-galls very 

 frequently exhibit monstrosities in their growth, caused some- 

 times by the early death of the female inhabitant, in which 

 case the orifice of the gall closes up, but sometimes they 

 are owing to the parasitic attacks of numerous minute Hy- 

 menoptera." The Cocci are, however, exposed to the attacks 

 of Chalcidites, and, moreover, a species of weevil inhabits 

 one of them ; and spiders and ants occasionally take up their 

 residence in galls that have been deserted. The enormous 

 size of these Coccus-galls strikes the European Entomologist 

 with astonishment. " I found one," writes Mr. Schrader, 

 "of the species Brachyscelis munita where the length of the 

 whole gall was eleven inches, and the thickest part eight 

 lines wide. A gall of my species, Brachyscelis duplex, was 

 six inches and a half long, and its greatest width eighteen 



