114 
6. W. H. Tietkcns in Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., v, 280 (letter read 30th June, 
1880). He was at the Bunda Plateau, north of the Australian Bight. 
At this particular time of the year a white substance is found on the Mallee leaves ; it is commonly 
called manna, and is a secretion formed by a small insect, under which its eggs are laid, upon the leaf. 
This is collected in enormous quantities, and any savage you meet will offer you his wommai or bale of 
this substance. ' Seen in a lump as they carry it, it has a dazzlingly white appearance, and is very sweet 
and agreeable. 
7. W. H. Wooster. " How the Lerp Crystal Palace is Built." Journ. Micros. 
Soc. Viet., Vol. i, No. 4, p. 91 (1882) (1 plate). 
Observations on a Victorian species of Psylla which he watched building its 
covering under the microscope. 
8. P. Beveridge. " On the aborigines inhabiting the great Lacustrine and Riverine 
depression of the Lower Murray, Lower Murrumbidgee, Lower Lachlan, and Lower 
Darling." Proc. R.S. N.S.W. xvii, 63 (1883). Contains notes on the " Laarp " 
harvest. 
9. This is criticised by Froggatt (Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. , xxv, 251) in the 
following words : 
Mr. Beveridge " referred to it under the heading of ' Laarp,' which, he says, ' is 
the excrement of a small green beetle wherein the larva thereof is deposited.' He gives 
a very remarkable account of how the natives collected and fed upon the lerp-scales 
during the summer months ; and he adds that it is so plentiful ' that a native can easily 
gather from 40 to 60 pounds weight of it in a day.' But this must be a slip, for old 
residents of the Wimmera, where it was very plentiful before the Mallee scrub was 
cleared off, have informed me that 2-3 Ib. was quite as much as anyone could obtain 
in a day ; and that the blacks used to gather it for food in winter, rolling it up in 
bark and hiding it in the trees; when they wanted to eat it they first moistened 
it with water. 
" Many species form regular galls and blisters upon leaves, chiefly those of 
Eucalypts. These first appear as little pits, which swell into either bubble-like 
excrescences or thickened rounded masses enclosing the larva. This emerges from an 
opening either on the upper or under surface of the leaf. 
" Others again hide under loose bark on the trunk or branchlets of a tree, 
enveloping themselves in a mass of flocculent matter, which exudes and forms white 
spots dotting the trunk all over. These species are so diligently looked after by several 
kinds of ants, which sometimes form galleries over them, that it is difficult to collect 
specimens. 
" Most of the naked species are more common upon Acacias and other scrub 
trees than upon Eucalypts, and swarm in such numbers on the under surface of the leaves 
or over the young branchlets, as at first sight to be easily mistaken for aphides. 
' Some of the true lerp-producing species present very curious examples of insect 
architecture. i 
