482 Mr. A. S. Olliff on Australian 
LXVITI.—Australian Entomophytes, or Entomogenous Fungi, 
and some Account of their Insect-Hosts. By ARTHUR 
SipNEY OLLIFF, Government Entomologist New Sonth 
Wales, Fellow Ent. Soc. London, Life-Member Ent. Soc. 
France *. 
TuE Entomophytes, or Entomogenous Fungi, a remarkable 
group of parasitic plants which live upon and at the expense 
of various insects, appear to attain their highest development 
in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. They may be 
said to be more or less familiar objects to the tourist, to whom 
dried but seldom perfect specimens are offered for a few pence, 
and for whose benefit wonderful stories are related as to their 
origin. At many of the smaller hostelries bundles of specimens 
may be seen ready for the curiosity-seeker; and others are 
commonly to be obtained from the guides, both white and 
Maori, in the holiday resorts, especially in the hot-lakes 
district of Rotorua. ‘These travellers’ tales, to some of which 
we have alluded in detail, have a curious interest of their 
own, and are by no means confined to the casual observer. 
They have received currency even at the hands of entomolo- 
gists and botanists, from whom some hesitation might have 
been expected in accepting the wild statements made by 
persons entirely ignorant of the habits and structure of both 
insects and fungi. It is singular that certain obviously erro- 
neous statements regarding the identity of the hosts upon 
which these parasitic fungi thrive (although long since 
corrected by competent observers resident in the countries 
where the Entomophytes occur) should recur again and again 
in books of travel and in the writings of systematic entomo- 
logists. The worse offenders in this respect, as an examina- 
tion of the literature of the subject will show, are the lepido- 
pterists, especially those who confine themselves, with a mere 
pretence of an examination of structural characters, to 
describing the wing-markings and colouring of such specimens 
as come before them, a class from which we, in Australia, 
are unhappily not entirely free. Strangely enough, when 
other workers holding different views as to the value of the 
so-called species, established by these describers by methods 
which can only be compared to those employed in matching 
pieces of floor-cloth, find it desirable to combine or to disregard 
these alleged species, it is this very class of lepidopterists who 
* From a separate pamphlet issued by the Department of Agriculture, 
New South Wales, for which we are indebted to the Author. 
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