360 



and that it attacks particularly those individuals which have reached 

 the end of their evolution. It does not penetrate the tissues like En- 

 tomophthora and Isaria, but vegetates suj)erficially and only becomes 

 dangerous to the insect when it invades the tracheae and causes asphixi- 

 ation. Moreover, Lachnidiuni can only develop in certain conditions 

 of humidity, which are rarely present in Algeria, and it is not proven, 

 so far, that the cryptogam attacks the eggs of the Migratory Locust, 

 even when these have been laid by infested parents. The i)r^^ftture 

 glorification of Lachnidium as a specific for the Migratory Locust is 

 not unlike the recent proposition of certain optimistic Galifornians to 

 cease the spraying and fumigation of their citrus orchards for the Eed 

 Scale in the expectation that the new Australian parasites would do 

 the work more effectually and cheaply. As M. Giard pointedlyremarks, 

 " In moments of public calamity, unfortunately, the people who suffer 

 need no invitation to have recourse to the counsels of charlatans." 



GALL-MAKING COCCID^. 



We have just received from Mr. Walter W. Froggatt, of the Techno- 

 logical Museum of Sydney, ^ew South Wales, a brief but extremely 

 interesting paper entitled ^' JS^otes on the family Brachyscelid^e, with 

 some account of their Parasites and Descriptions of New Species," ex- 

 tracted from Yol. Yii of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of 

 Xew South Wales. These remarkable scale-insects form curious woody 

 galls on plants of the genus Eucalyptus. The male galls are small 

 tube-like excrescences, with the apex dilated into a bell or cup like 

 form, generally bright red or yellow, and are always found u^Don the 

 leaves or very slender twigs, except when they spring direct from the 

 female galls. The female is usually cylindrical and grub-like in ap- 

 pearance, enveloped in a waxy secretion. She lies in a fleshy gall 

 sometimes a quarter of an inch thick, the head downward and the anal 

 end pointing outward. The active, two-winged adult males emerge 

 from their smaller galls and by means of their slender pointed abdomen 

 impregnate the imprisoned females through an apical orifice in the 

 female galls. The young escape from an egg-mass within the body of 

 the female and emerge through an opening in the gall, burying them- 

 selves in the bark or leaves and causing new gall growths around them. 

 Mr. Froggatt is of the opinion that parthenogenesis occurs with this 

 family, since he has found clusters of active larvae in the same gall with 

 the perfect and evidently unimpregnated female. Mr. Froggatt rede- 

 scribes in the true genus Brachyscelis all the species described by Mr. 

 H. L. Schrader in the Transactions of the Entomological Society of Kew 

 South Wales for 1862, and adds eight new species from material ob- 

 tained from various parts of Australia. These x)eculiar insects are of 

 some economic importance, since, though they do not cause the death 

 of the Eucalyptus, they stunt the young trees in Eucalyptus i)lanta 

 tions and render them weak and unfit for transplanting. 



