1888.] 87 



of the abdomen. Abdomen distended, at the base narrower than the thorax ; at the 

 sides and posteriorly, but at a lower level, a well-defined broad border (connexivum), 

 widened from the base onward to the middle, and giving to the abdomen its broad- 

 oval contour ; on the widely rounded apex of the abdomen beneath, at the base of 

 the last segment, are three small papillate lobes, in a transverse line. Legs (Fig. 3) 

 all similar, black, strong, with simple hairs of various lengths, longer, more slender 

 and more distant on the outer 6ide, more spinose and closer together on the lower 

 side of tibiee and tarsi, especially the latter ; tarsi not half the length of the tibite, 



piceous ; claws short, strong, without hairs, piceous. 



Length, 7 — 8, greatest breadth, 4 — 5 mm. 

 Male unknown to me. 



Of the family J&onophlebidce, to which this Coccid evidently 

 belongs, the characters of the genus Ortonia, so far as laid down by 

 Signoret (Ess. Cochen., p. 401), (the female sex only being known), 

 agree better than those of any other with this species, which does not 

 appear to have been described in this or any other genus. In the 

 antenna? there is great similarity to those of the larva of the $ 

 Guerinia serratulce, Fab. (Sign., Ess. Cochen., p. 390, pi. xviii, fig. 4>a), 

 inasmuch, as some of the anterior joints in that genus are short-clavate 

 or pyriform, and the terminal joint has two clubbed hairs, but the 

 other characters of the adult are dissimilar. Maskell has united 

 Guerinia to Monophlebus in his '' Account of the Insects noxious to 

 Agriculture and Plants in New Zealand," p. 90. When the male of 

 the present species becomes known, its true generic position can be 

 better appreciated. 



On June 23rd, Mr. E. T. Lewis, Mount Park Crescent, Ealing, 

 had the kindness to send me five living examples of this insect, which, 

 with others, had been received from Mr. J. E. Ward, Eichmond, Natal, 

 by Mr. G. Henderson, the editor of the " British Bee Keepers' 

 Journal," and he has since most obligingly made some excellent camera 

 lucida drawings, from which the accompanying illustrations are se- 

 lected, the hairs shown being only those seen in profile, there being 

 many others. The sender wrote as follows, under date May 16th : — 



" I am sending in a match box some insects I obtained from a climber which 

 grows under the tiles of a verandah ; there are no leaves on the boughs under the 

 tiles, and these insects lie in large numbers along the rough bark of the boughs." 



In order to keep my specimens fit for examination, I killed them 

 with the hydrocyanic odour of laurel as soon as I got them ; but 

 Mr. Lewis, who kept some alive, gave me the following interesting 

 particulars on June 25th : — 



" I am rather surprised to hear that the specimens I sent had lost their long 

 cottony appendages before reaching you, as they were all fringed to a distance 

 equal to fully two-thirds the length of their bodies when I packed them. I find 



