Miscellaneous. 77 



so far north. In Jamaica, if instructin<^ aa inexperienced person to 

 collect Coccidae, it would almost be sufficient to say " gather leaves 

 of various trees that grow about the town." 



The luxuriance of tropical vegetation is such that the harm done 

 by Coccidae is not so great as one might expect from their abun- 

 dance ; but still their presence is often the occasion of annoyance 

 and iujury to growers of field and garden crops. On the whole I 

 see no reason to doubt that Coccidoe do more iujury in the tropics 

 than elsewhere, although their ravages have not very frequently 

 been recorded ; and probably there is no tropical country whose 

 Coccid fauna is not at the present time being increased by intro- 

 ductions. 



Having said so much, I wish to call your attention to a few facts 

 which have come under my own observation, hoping to illustrate 

 thereby the more important phases of the subject. 



The number and variety of neotropical Coccidoe have not been 

 sufficiently realized in the past, owing to the fragmentary nature of 

 our information concerning them. At the present time those of the 

 "West Indies are better known than the species inhabiting the main- 

 land ; but even here the records are exceedingly imperfect. Jamaica 

 has 61 recorded species, but Cuba has less than half a dozen ; and I 

 cannot discover a single record from Haiti. The Coccidse of the 

 Bahamas are almost entirely unknown, although the Caicos and 

 Turks islands have each produced an interesting endemic form. In 

 the Lesser Antilles, thanks to Mr. C. A. Barber, Antigua has 16 

 records ; but of the other islands only one has as many as half a 

 dozen, the figures being Barbados 7 (only 5 actually published), 

 Montserrat 4, Grenada 3 (records not yet published), and Xevis, 

 St. Kitts, and Dominica 1 each. Trinidad has 14 species (some not 

 fully identified), but owing to the exertions of iCr. F. W. Urich I 

 shall shortly be able to add considerably to this figure. The 

 Mexican list stands at the absurdly low figure of 26, which includes 

 12 found by the present writer recently while travelling through 

 that country. It will be understood how insufficient are the 

 published records when I mention that not one of the species I found 

 was previously known from Mexico, so far as I have been able to 

 ascertain. The List from British Guiana exceeds 20, but very few 

 species are known from other parts of South America. For Brazil 

 I find mentioned about half a dozen, for Chile 4, for Ecuador 1, and 

 so forth. 



Yet these beginnings of knowledge already indicate some inter- 

 esting facts in geograiAical distribution. 



Aspidiotxis (D-ticuIatus, Morg., is known from Demerara, Trinidad 

 (St. Ann's, on Pandanus, coll. by F. W. Urich), Barbados, Xevis, 

 Jamaica, and Mexico (Vera Cruz). It has not been detected in 

 Antigua, where it must be absent or rare, else Mr. Barber would 

 surely have found it. 



AspkUotus personatus, Comst., is known from Demerara, Bar- 

 bados, Cuba, and Jamaica. I did not find it at Vera Cruz ; and, what 

 is more interesting, Mr. Urich after some search has been unable to 

 detect it in Trinidad. 



