LECAN11TM HEMISriLERICUM. 119 



Tlie food-plants are ferns of various species : 

 Adiantum spp. ; Pteris spp. ; Asplenium spp. It also 

 occurs on various species of palms, on crotons, 

 Stephanotis, Beaumontia grandiftora, Bryopliyllum 

 calycrinum, Asparagus plumosus, Begonia spp., Gqffea 

 liberica and arabica, Stangeria schizodon, Eranthemum 

 cinnibar inum, Clerodendron speciosum, Bowenia specta- 

 bilis, Casimeroa edulis, Eugenia malaccensis, Leuca- 

 dendron argenteum, Schinus sp., Ardisia sp., Glavija 

 sp., Aspidium sp., Eondeletia sp., Sarcocephalus sp., 

 Muhleubergia sp. 



Habits. A very prolific species, but it never gains 

 headway on well-kept plants, its large size rendering 

 it a very conspicuous insect, and the horticulturist 

 generally managing to keep it in check by removing 

 it with his fingers. Eggs and larvae are produced 

 throughout the year, even in cool houses and cottages, 

 there being no regular succession of broods. The 

 females are universally parthenogertetic ; the males, 

 being extremely rare, have only twice been met with 

 during the last thirty-five years. About the year 1867 

 Boisduval (1. c.) briefly described the colour of the 

 male for the first time, and my own examples, obtained 

 in Norfolk, are, I believe, the only other instances of 

 its occurrence. Boisduval does not give the name of 

 the plant from which he obtained the males ; but mine 

 were taken from ferns (Pteris spp.) in August, 1891. 

 Occasionally one finds the female attacked in this 

 country by chalcidid parasites, but it is generally free 

 from such enemies ; it is, however, much more subject 

 to the attacks of a fungus to which it readily succumbs. 

 Mr. Gockerell* has also observed a similar, if not 

 identical fungoid disease in Jamaica, and suggests 

 that it is " probably a state of some cordyceps." 



Distribution. Europe (Signoret) ; Channel Islands 

 (Luff) ; Ceylon (Green) ; Japan (Kuwana) ; Cape 

 Colony, South Africa (Lounsbury) ; United States of 

 America, West Indies (Cockerell and Maxwell- Lefroy) ; 



* 'Bull. Botan. JDept., Jamaica/ n. s., vol. i, p. 71. 



