515 
For, as it is so concisely expressed in Dean Swift’s oft quoted 
couplet— 
The little fleas that do us tease 
Have other fleas that bite ’em; 
And these, in turn, have other fleas, 
And so on ad infinitum. 
To ward against the importation of noxious pests, the Govern- 
ment of Western Australia, profiting by the errors and the ex- 
perience of older fruit-growing countries, have passed a Fruit Pest 
Act, which provides for the disinfection, on landing, of plants and 
fruits, for the purpose of checking any possible importation from 
abroad of pests inimical to fruit trees and vines. 
These pests are of two classes:—the first of these are noxious 
insects; the second, parasitic fungi. 
Insects vary greatly in their shape, size, and colour, but on 
broad lines they all possess, when seen in their full-grown stage, 
certain features which differentiate them from other animals. They 
possess three pairs of legs, attached to a body divided into three 
definite portions—a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. 
Some of them—indeed, the majority—undergo during their 
development well-marked transformation or stages: Ist, the egg; 
2nd, the larva or caterpillar; 3rd, the pupa or chrysalis; 4th, the 
adult or imago stage. Moths and butterflies, amongst others, be- 
long to this class. In two or, may be, three periods of their trans- 
formation they take no food, and are fixtures; during these periods 
they do no actual harm. Thus, butterflies and moths are inert in 
the egg as well as the pupa stages; and some of them, such as 
the codlin moth for instance, do not feed. Yet it is during these 
periods of rest and transformation that it is often easier to attack 
them. These insects undergo what is called complete transfor- 
mation, in contradistinection of others which undergo incomplete 
transformation. This second class, such as grasshoppers and locusts, 
have eggs which, in hatching, give forth young insects which only 
differ from the full-grown ones in size and in possessing no wings. 
Instead of changing from larva to pupa, they proceed, by a series 
of moulting or casting off their skin, to the mature stage, and be- 
come imago. During these successive moultings they are known as 
“nymphs.” 
Again, some insects lay eggs, and are “oviparous”; while others 
bring forth their young alive, and are “viviparous.” The majority 
of them, however, proceed from the egg, whether that egy is de- 
posited and cemented to the plant by means of a viscous secretion 
or whether they give birth to young ones. In the latter case the 
female insect generally carries the egg internally until the hatching 
period arrives. 
So much for the life history of insects, considered broadly. A 
number of varieties depart from the pattern laid down in several 
