188 Transactions,— Zoology. 
The chief difficulty under which I have laboured has been that of being 
unable to compare my specimens of New Zealand scale-insects with those 
of other countries. The work just mentioned has, therefore, come most 
opportunely to me as a text-book. 
Not professing any degree of entomological science, I may, perhaps, in 
my descriptions of these insects, fail sometimes in properly expressing 
myself. I must take my chance of this, declaring myself quite open to 
correction. 
The Coccide are, as I said, a family of insects of the order Homoptera, 
The chief distinguishing features dividing them from all the other families 
are, 1st, the absence of wings or elytra in the females, and, 2nd, the absence 
of a mouth or rostrum in the males. 
The damage done by these insects, which attach themselves to different 
trees, is very great. Everybody must know the scale on the apple and pear 
trees, which covers the trunk and branches and eventually kills the tree. 
Every gardener knows how destructive they are to his flowers and choice 
plants, whether in the open air or in green-houses. It is stated that, in 
France, different species of Coccus and Lecanium have destroyed whole 
forests of almond, orange, and olive trees; in Mauritius and in Brazil the 
sugar-cane, and in Ceylon the coffee-plant, has been ravaged by them. Sir 
Wyville Thomson, in the volumes just published of the voyage of the 
** Challenger," states that in the Azores the cultivation of oranges was for a 
time almost stopped by a small species of Coccus; and we all know how the 
oranges and lemons which come to us from Sydney are covered with 
innumerable insects of the same family. In Christchurch a good example 
of their work may be seen in the holly hedge round the Christchurch Club, 
where Lecanium hesperidum reduced the plants a few years ago to a miser- 
able state. In Auckland, I saw a month or two ago a fine hedge of the 
kangaroo 4cacia being rapidly destroyed by colonies of an insect which 
appears to be a new species of Coccus, allied to Icerya. 
There is an immense variety in the appearance of the different species 
of Coccidæ, and this variety is rendered still greater by the fact that the 
insects themselves are by no means the same as a rule in all the stages of 
their existence, and by the difference between the sexes. There are, how- 
ever, certain characters which belong to all the species, and with which I 
may fitly begin my description of those that I have observed :— 
lst. In the first stage, after leaving the egg, there is no appreciable 
difference between the male and the female. The change in form does not 
take place until the insect discards its second pellicle. 
2nd. The males of all species have two wings, six legs, two antenna 
(generally pretty long), two proper eyes, and in some species two other eyes 
placed further back on the head, 
