1905.] 



The Felted Beech Coccus. 



757 



in life are united together and form a long sucking tube ; 

 with this slender apparatus the insect pierces the bark and 

 sucks up the juices of the tree. She has no power of locomotion 

 and remains stationary during the whole of her life, anchored 

 to the tree by her mouth organs as a fixed inert mass of 

 animal matter, motionless and apparently senseless. Almost 

 immediately after leaving the egg she covers her body with 

 the white felted secretion composed of fine filaments of wax 

 which thickens as she advances to maturity, forming an excel- 

 lent protection to her body, and is practically impervious to rain. 

 Within this covering (see Fig. i) the insect lives, lays her eggs, 

 and dies. The larvae, or "lice" as they are sometimes called,. 



Fig. 2b. Fig. 2. Fig, 2a. 



Fig. 2. — Female Beech Coccus (divested of the white covering) in the act of 

 extruding an egg, underside showing hair-like sucking mouth (magnified 40 times). 

 2a. Rudimentary antenna. 2b. One of the two rudimentary legs. (Both magnified 



about 600 times. ) 



are very tiny active creatures, and are scarcely visible to the 

 naked eye. They possess three pairs of legs and a pair of horns; 

 (antennae), and like their parents are of a yellow colour.. 

 Although they can and do travel over the bark of the tree,, 

 they are by no means of a wandering disposition, and usually 

 settle down in the immediate neighbourhood of the parent,, 

 the majority working their way under the bodies of their dying 

 or dead parents, taking up their positions, by preference, in the 

 deepest parts of the fissures in the bark, where they remain for 

 the rest of their lives pumping up the juices of the tree. Each 

 individual protects its body with secretion, which adds to that 

 already secreted above them by the insects of the previous 

 generations ; thus the secretion gradually thickens and spreads 

 over the tree-trunk, forming a more or less continuous mass, 

 often attaining a considerable thickness. Those larvae which 

 wander over the bark are liable to be borne away by the wind 



