Notes on Habits and Metamorphosis of Lepidiota frenchi, Black. 7 
sudden impact being plainly audible at a distance of several yards. In 
addition to this oft-repeated sound, the air, so still a few moments 
before, vibrates loudly with a continuous hum, due to the accumulated 
buzzing of the vast multitude. It may be of passing interest to mention 
that the writer, upon testing this humming sound with a tuning-fork, 
found the note to be B natural—s tones below the middle C of a piano 
at concert pitch—and very different from the deep tremulous drone that 
characterises the flight of our grey-back cane-beetle. 
The turmoil depicted above lasts for 10 to 15 minutes, when 
copulation immediately takes place and silence again prevails. At this 
stage the beetles may be observed on all sides clinging in couples to the 
cane leaves at a height of 3 or 4 feet above ground level, and, if picked 
off from the foliage, will he quietly in the hand without making the least 
effort to escape. 
The attitude assumed whilst mating is rather curious, as the male 
alone clings to the leaf blade, the female hanging motionless head down- 
wards supported in mid-air with the ventral surface of body exposed 
to view. 
Connection does not apparently continue for more than about half 
an hour, and is followed by a period of feeding, during which the beetles 
(display little or no activity, 
Towards dawn, however, they again take wing for a few minutes, 
and resettle on the gum trees and bushes from which they suddenly circle 
erratically to the ground as dayhght appears, burrowing as deeply as 
possible among grass tufts or under creeping vegetation, leaf-mould, 
&e., In order to avoid sunlight and escape notice from birds and other 
enemies. 
Beetles that after copulation were placed at once in breeding cages, 
and not allowed to feed, laid no eggs, and died after about 16 days 
without the ovary having developed. 
The period of emergence occupies from three to four weeks, the pest 
being first noticed swarming over cultivated areas, and finally issuing 
from unbroken forest land consisting of stiff voleanic and clay loam soils. 
They were observed to fly in greatest numbers during warm 
evenings when the temperature was between 75 and 80 degrees F. 
THE EGG. 
Mode of Deposition.—The egg stage of frenchi has not hitherto been 
described or figured, and happens to differ very noticeably from that 
of our grey-back cane-beetle. 
On 16th December, 1916, two adult females of this species which had 
copulated the previous evening were placed by the writer in special 
breeding cages containing young growing cane plants, and when 
examined eleven days later 28 eggs were found in one cage and 33 in 
the other. 
