62 AUSTRALIAN ZOOLOGY. 
Where found.—Itis confined to Australasia. Its habitat ex- 
tends over the whole of the Australian colonies, except Tasmania, 
and the southern parts of Victoria, but it is common in the hot 
tracts of the latter colony near the Murray, and very common in 
Queensland. In New South Wales it is most abundant in the coast 
district. In the early days it was numerous on the sand-hills 
around Surry Hills, Randwick and Botany. The Museum has 
specimens from Randwick and Sydney. It has been met with at 
Narrabeen, to the north of Manly, and in the salt-bush country, 
near Jerilderie. Dr Gray records specimens from Port Essington | 
and from north-west Australia. Mr. Wallace, the naturalist, ob- 
served death adders on some of the islands in the Arafura Sea. 
In the Macleay Museum of natural history, at the University, there 
are exhibits from Moore Park, Torres Straits, and Endeavour 
River. In South Australia it has been found in the sand-hills at 
Glenelg, Hindmarsh Island, Brighton Beach, Onkaparinga, Torres 
Island ; in that colony also it is found chiefly in sandy localities. 
When the late Sir W. Macleay visited New Guinea, in 1875, the 
natives brought him a death adder, the only one he obtained, unfor 
tunately its spine had been broken off. He regarded this snake as 
being a new species of adder, and described it as such before the 
Linnean Society, Sydney. 
Great Brack, or Manna CicApA—Cicada merens. 

Raucis sole sub ardenti resonant arbusta cicadis.—Virelb. 
Description.—The cicada is erroneously called a locust. The 
head is large, wide, and short. The eyes are round, of moderate 
size, and very prominent. They are above the anterior edge of the 
rothorax ; there are three small ocelli in a group on the top of the 
Feral The upper surface, the legs, and the veins of the wings are 
Bra WATArADIRUS with a few greyish hairs, most numerous on the 
sides of the abdominal segments. The under side of the abdomen 
is light-yellowish brown. ‘The eyes are orange, the ocelli red. It 
has two pairs of wings, the inner pair being the smaller. The sexes 
are nearly alike in size.and colour, but are easily distinguishable by 
the male having the two large, subtrigonal, dark-brown covers to 
the sound organs, on the under sides of the junction of the thorax 
and the abdomen: while the female wants the sound organs. The 
length of. the body is 1 inch 53 lines. ‘lhe beak is hard and horny ; 
it constitutes an apparatus for perforating the bark and ‘sucking the 
juices. It is remarkabte for the loud song, or chirping whir, of 
the males in the heat of the summer; numbers of them on the 
hottest days produce an almost deafening sound. One might almost 
say with Virgil, 4 cantu querule@ rumpent arbusta cicad@, only to 
burst the Australian bush would be rather too much for even their 
distracting powers. ) 
Habits.—After the singing has drawn attention to the perfect 
insect having emerged from the pupa skin, the females may be seen 
