MEMBRA CIDsE. 
One characteristic of porosa is the high and convex dorsal ridges and the 
comparatively short pronotum. The figure is added for comparison, and is drawn 
from one out of several examples in the National Collection. 
In the figure drawn the tegmina show brown nervures instead of the more correct 
normal brick-red veins. 
LARVA AND PUPA OF HOPLOPHORA PERTUSA. 
(Plate XX. fig. 3; Plate XIX. fig. 6.) 
Few naturalists can venture to predicate the form that any species of a com¬ 
paratively unknown family of Arthropoda may assume in its early metamorphoses. 
The conditions are too varied and complex. As somewhat analogous examples, we 
may note how great is the divergence of form shown by the naupilius of the common 
lobster, from the'animal in its adult or imaginal condition ; or as shown by the pluteus 
whilst developing into the echinus ; or again, more remotely by the tadpole passing 
into the newt. No one would, a priori , guess that the caterpillar foreshadowed the 
butterfly. Such unexpected facts may well caution us against hasty guesses in assign¬ 
ing some of the curious pupal and larval insects sometimes found in cabinets to 
particular species of Membracidse, though these immature forms clearly belong to this 
family of Homoptera. 
The metamorphic external changes of the Hemiptera Homoptera probably are not 
so remarkable as those to be noted in some other insect orders. Yet they show 
occasionally some interesting and unlooked-for peculiarities. 
We have before described some of these peculiarities in the genus Membracis. As 
the pupae are not quiescent like the chrysalides of Lepidoptera, but are active in 
leaping from bush to bush, we do not, so far as observation now goes, remark 
great anomalies or departures from usual types. 
The larvae of some of the Darninae will be discussed farther on, but here it will 
be convenient to notice the pupal forms of a species of Hoplophora closely allied to 
II. pertiisa, even if not afterwards proved to belong to that identical species. 
The larva is ochreous-yellow or greenish, spotted with brown, with the pronotum 
much less developed than in the pupa. It forms a kind of hood over the bead, 
leaving the rudiments of the scutellum uncovered to view; the sheaths of the 
incipient tegmina are small and brownish in colour, and the abdominal rings develop 
small flaps at their edges; the hind tarsi certainly are not shorter than the inter¬ 
mediate pair, as may be noted in the adult insect. 
►Size, 7 x 5 mm, 
