232 Mr. R. H. Lewis's Case of 



XLVII. Case of Maternal Attendance on the Larva by an 

 Insect of the Tribe o/Terebrantia, belonging to the Genus 

 Perga, observed at Hoharton, Tasmania. By R. H. Lewis, 

 JEsg,, M.E.S., in a Letter addressed to the Secretary. 



[Read Dec. 7, 1835.] 



The maternal solicitude of insects for their offspring has been seldom 

 observed to extend beyond the various contrivances which instinct 

 directs them to make at the time of the deposition of the egg, the female 

 insect dying in most cases immediately after. In social Bees and 

 Ants the parental duties to the larvae are performed by a particular 

 portion of the community allotted for that purpose. The cases of 

 the Earwig, first, I believe, observed by De Geer, and subsequently 

 said to have been confirmed by Mr. Rennie in the Penny Magazine, 

 and a doubtful one of Acanthosoma grisea mentioned by Kirby, are 

 the only instances I can call to mind resembling the present. On 

 the 4th April, 1835, I first had the pleasure of observing, in the 

 Gov^ernment domain on the banks of the Derwent, this most decided 

 case of parental attendance in a tribe of insects where I least ex- 

 pected to find it, the Terebrantia. I have not been able to detect 

 the male insects, they probably having all died before I arrived, but, 

 judging from the females, it would seem to belong to the genusPer^fffl, 

 of which it is probably a new species ; but I am now rearing a brood, 

 and when I am in possession of the other sex I will not fail to trans- 

 mit a full description of its characters. A description of the female 

 will be found appended, from which you will perhaps be enabled to 

 pronounce its true situation ; but at this distance from collections 

 and works of reference I can give little better than conjectures. The 

 female insect deposits her eggs in a longitudinal incision between 

 the two surfaces of the leaves of one of the gum trees {Eucalyptus) , 

 adjoining the midrib. Though it is but one chamber, I imagine it 

 to be formed by numerous punctures in successively depositing the 

 eggs, traces of such being visible along the midrib. The eggs are 

 placed transverselyin a double series, and are in number about eighty, 

 but this is subject to considerable fluctuation. They are of a pale 

 yellow colour, and of an oblong form, two lines in length and half 

 a line in breadth. On this leaf the mother sits till the exclusion 

 of the larvae, which appear not to remain in the ova state many 

 days ; nor can she be made to leave the spot except by actual force. 



