attacked by the beetle only when they are in a state of 

 incipient decay. Another of the larger Longicorns, Aemona 

 hirta F., is sometimes destructive to orange and lemon trees 

 in the North Island, as well as to the Puriri, or New Zealand 

 teak (Vitex littoralis). This valuable timber tree is also 

 subject to the attacks of the larva of the large Hepialid moth 

 Charagia vireseens Doubl., and sound logs are in consequence 

 often difficult to obtain. Two weevils, Mitrastethus hituher- 

 culatus F. and the Cossonid Xenocnema spinipes WolL, are 

 also at times somewhat injurious to Kauri and other Coni- 

 ferous timber, and at Reefton, a mining town in the South 

 Island hastily built of " Kahikatea " or so-called " white 

 pine," I found that two or three of the native species of 

 Cossonides, associated with incredible numbers of our familiar 

 Anobium domesticum, had practically eaten up many of the 

 houses, through the planking of which it was quite easy to 

 thrust one's finger in places. 



Like the Coleoptera, the Lepidoptera of New Zealand were 

 for a long period regarded as being exceedingly poor in species, 

 and generally of somewhat unattractive appearance. It 

 cannot be denied that the butterflies and moths of the 

 Islands include few forms of large size or bright colours, 

 and that, as with the beetles, many groups of otherwise 

 world-wide distribution are here strikingly deficient or entirely 

 absent. But during the last half-century the number of 

 known endemic Lepidoptera has been very greatly augmented 

 by the researches of such diligent resident entomologists as 

 Mr. C. M. Wakefield, Mr. E. W. Fereday, Prof. Button and 

 Mr. G. V. Hudson, whose finely illustrated and most useful 

 work " New Zealand Moths and Butterflies," published in 

 1898, marks an era in the study of the fauna of the Dominion. 

 Even a greater debt is owing to Mr. E. Meyrick, who resided 

 and collected actively in New Zealand for some years. Besides 

 publishing the descriptions of a multitude of hitherto unknown 

 species, chiefly in the " Transactions of the New Zealand 

 Institute," he has in the same journal, between the years 

 1910 and 1917, revised and'brought up to date our knowledge 

 of nearly all the principal sections of the Order, as represented 

 in the region. The extreme importance and interest of the 



