BIOLOGIC NOTES ON SOME CEYLONESE RHYNCHOTA. 



116 



are_ difficult to find and, being very active on the wing, make 

 their escape as soon as the plant is disturbed. I was fortunate 

 in capturing one pair in coitu, and confined them in a glass jar 

 with some young shoots of the plant. A few days later I found 

 several eggs embedded in the fleshy stalks. They are deposited 

 singly, the body of the egg completely concealed (fig. 4), the 



DisPHiNCTUS FOEMosus, Kirkaldy. — Fig. 3. Egg in section x 20 diam. 

 Fig. 4, showing part of egg exposed. 



position marked — as with the eggs of Helopeltis* — by a pair of 

 delicate, glassy, horn-like processes. The complete egg (fig. 3) 

 might easily be mistaken for that of Helipeltis, the principal 

 difference being that the two processes are usually divergent 

 instead of convergent. The longer process has a knee-like bend 

 shortly above the base. The cap of the egg is delicately pitted. 

 The body of the egg is smooth, curved, elongate, of a pale 

 creamy white colour. Length, 1*50 mm. Breadth, 025 mm. 

 Longer process, 0*50 mm. Shorter process, 0*20 mm. 



Anoplocnemis phasianus (Fabr.). 

 Both the adult and immature insects occur frequently on the 

 young shoots of Erijthrina lithosperma. They puncture the 

 extremities of the shoots, causing them to wilt and wither. I 

 noticed, one day, an adult male apparently feeding, and ap- 

 proached it to observe the modus operandi. The bug, however, 

 resented the intrusion, and ejected a jet of fluid backwards to a 

 distance of fully eighteen inches. The jet appeared to proceed 

 " ab ana." 



N.B. — Mr. Albert D. Michael has kindly examined the parasites 

 mentioned above as being fuund on Amorgius indica, and determines 

 them provisionally as larvae of Hydrochna belostomcB, Kiley (adult 

 Hydrachn(e are not parasitic). In reply to my note, pointing out that 

 the American Amorgius is a different species from tlie Sinhalese one, 

 and asking whether the parasite of the former is actually conspecific 



'■'' Compare Dudgeon's account of the oviposition of Helopeltis theivora, 

 Waterh. and DispJdnctiis dudgeoni, Kirkaldy (1894, lud. Mus, Notes iii. 

 (5), pp. 33-8; 3 figs.) ; also Sharp, 1899, Cambridge Nat. Hist. vi. pp. 561-2 

 (Sharp incorrectly cites " Dudgeon, p. 53)." — G. W. K. 



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