222 
Red Gum, for it falls a victim t<> Urvbra luqens, whilst it* neighbours, the White Hum (E. riminiHs), the 
Swamp Gum (S. Guttnii) (E. o>'ala, J.H.M.), and the Yellow, Box (E. melliodora) are untouched and in 
vigorous health.* 
I feel little doubt that this will explain why it is that in many parts of the country, at all elevations 
above sea level, certain tracts of dead forest are to be found. Twenty-five years ago I noticed that during 
the course -f three years all the White Gums (E. viminalit) in part of the Omeo district died, whilst 
E. pave/flora (coriacea) and E. stellulala remained alive. 
I have said that in my opinion the increased growth of the Eucalyptus forests since the first settle- 
ment of Gippsland has been due to the checking of bush fires year by year, and to the increase thereby 
of the chance of survival of the seedling Eucalypts, and to the same cause we may assign the increase of the 
leaf-acting insects which seem in places to threaten the very existence of the Ked Gum. 
Bush fires, which swept the country more or less annually, kept down the enormous multiplication of 
insect life, destroying myriads of grasshoppers and caterpillars, which now devastate parts of the Gippsland 
district, spoiling the oat crops and eating the grass down to the ground. 
The ravages of the larvae of Lepidoptera are at present greatly aided by the sickly state in which 
many of the Red Gum forests in Gippsland now are. The long-continued use of the country for pasturage, 
and the trampling of the surface of the ground by stock, has greatly hardened the soil, so that rain which 
formerly, in which I may call the " normal state " as regards Eucalypts, soaked in, now runs off. In the 
course of successive droughty seasons the soil of such places becomes thoroughly dry and hard, so that the 
Red Gum is deprived of much moisture which it otherwise would have in reserve. The trees are wanting 
in vigour and thus unable to withstand the attacks of insect pests. 
While at page 224 I give a list of insects frequenting (chiefly) our Gum-tree,s, I 
proceed to give a specimen of the way I should like an arrangement to be also made in 
the reverse direction, that is to say, with the plant singled out, and a list of the insects 
found on it. What I give was written out by me some years ago, without the aid of an 
entomologist, and it is neither complete nor brought up to date. 
The Swamp Mahogany (Eucalyptus robusta). 
. A. A. Skusc recorded the finding of a gall of the coccid Brachyscelis munita Schrad., on this tree 
(Prnr. Linn. Soc. N.S. W., 2nd ser. v, 268). For a full account of this gall, found on the same tree, see op. cit. 
vii, 360, 361. where W. W. Froggatt, in his Notes on the Family BrachysceUdce, remarks that the leaves of 
E. robusta appear to be attacked by many insect larvae. In a further series of the same Notes, Froggatt 
(op. cit. viii. 344) records the finding of Opisthoscelis pisiformis (n.sp.) on E. robusta. 
Mr. Froggatt exhibited a twig of this tree attacked by " lerp "-making Psyllce, and observed that 
a large number of these trees had their foliage entirely destroyed by the countless numbers of the larvse 
of these insects (Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., 2nd ser., vii, 380). 
In the Sydney district this is one of the Eucalypts frequented by the noisy Cicada or " Locust " 
known to boys as " The Double Drummer," and to entomologists as Thopha satcata Amyot (Froggatt 
op. cit. x, 528). 
The Rev. T. Blackburn describes (op. cit. ix, 95) a new beetle, Ceratognathus froggattii, belonging 
to the family Pectimcornes, bred by Mr. Froggatt from E. robusta, collected at Botany Bay. Froggatt 
)) gives the following notes in regard to this little stag-horn beetle :- The larva lives in the 
.robusta, the trunk of which, when the trees are large, is covered with a thick, felty, fibrous outer 
^numbers of small insects and their larva. The Ceratognathus excavates oval chambers 
i inch below the outer surface, where it lies lightly curled round. At Botany I found the, 
beetle.s and pup* m these cavities early in November." 
Observed ' however - in 80Dle >lite, *. nuBicdan and E. piperita have beeu slightly attacked by 
