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known of some of its striking peculiarities, it may not be uninteresting to notice in 
detail the result of an attentive study of its habits and nature. It is of a dirty yellow. 
ochre colour, with its antenne, which are iong and slender, composed of alternate 
black and yellowish joints. The male, which is much smaller than the female, is about 
13 inch in length, and the female 2} inches. The superior wings are rudimentary ; 
the inferior are large, delicate and transparent; and as the latter far exceed the 
tegmina in size, and therefore require some provision for their defence, the anterior 
portion is greatly thickened, serving as a plate, beneath which the other part is folded 
longitudinally. In the prothorax lie two elongated spindle-shaped glands, about one- 
fourth of an inch in length, which secrete a white fetid fluid. These are surrounded bya 
network of nerves, by the contraction of which, at the will of the insect, the fluid is 
discharged through two raised pores which are situated in the anterior portion of the 
prothorax, When disturbed or attacked they make use of this means of defence, and 
the pungent odour produced by the milky fluid is as powerful as it is offensive. These 
insects are rarely seen otherwise than in a state of copulation, the male lying along the 
back of the female. When feeding, the male leaves his position on her back, still 
however remaining in apparent sexual contact. The young females are wingless till 
nearly full grown, and lead a single life up to that period. The larva resembles the 
imago, but is apterous; the pupa has rudimentary wings. With regard to the habits 
of these Phasmida, they are lucifugous and gregarious. During the day they hide 
themselves in the holes of trees, and amongst brushwood where it is sufficiently dense 
to exclude the light, and also in the cellars and behind the boarding of houses. In 
these nooks they arrange themselves in thick clusters. At dusk they issue forth to 
feed, and at break of day return to their hiding-places. Their mode of progression is 
extremely slow, except when alarmed, and they seldom make use of their wings. They 
are found in greatest numbers in the months of May, June and July. They subsist 
in this locality entirely upon the leaves of the Bignonia chinensis, which shrub forms a 
hedge in front of Belmont. Any evening after dark, by the light of a lantern, 
hundreds of pairs may be counted feeding greedily upon the young leaves of this 
hedge. It is very interesting to watch the curious and rapid manner in which they 
cut the leaf, taking a narrow curved strip from right to left, and then eating back as 
hastily in the opposite direction till the entire leaf is consumed. The eggs of this 
insect are cylindyical, about one-eighth of an inch in length, tuberculated, with an oval 
depression on one side, and fitted with a valve at one end which is surmounted by a 
single tubercle in the centre: they lay them during the day in their hiding-places, one 
by one. The female is infested by the larve of some Ichneumon fly, of which it is to 
be regretted no specimens have been procured, owing to a series of unlucky accidents 
happening to the pups, just as they had become matured. These larve are three- 
eighths of an inch in length, and are provided with two minute hooks, by means of 
which they fix themselves to the interior of the insect. As many as seven have been 
found in one Phasma. Upon being taken out they make vigorous but unsuccessful 
attempts to creep; becoming partially exhausted as it were from these efforts, they 
gradually become quiet, and ina few hours they change to a dark brown chrysalis. 
After remaining in the Phasma until the period arrives for their transformation into the 
pupa state they find their way out singly and at intervals, and in a few hours assume 
the chrysalis form. The Phasma appears to suffer no inconvenience, and, what is most 
curious, no injury from them; it is unknown in what manner they make their egress 
