138 MONOPHLEBUS STEBBINGII. 
Ee ete nce a i re 
continues for about three weeks. The method of operation is 
as follows. The insect flies up to a female and alights on her 
back and then forces itself under her between her ventral 
surface and the twig on which she is sitting, turning on its 
back in doing so. It then pushes its anal appendages into 
the anal ventral opening inthe female, When attached to her 
its head is usually facing in the opposite direction to which 
she is sitting. 
After fertilization the 2 scales apparently cease feeding and 
march down the tree to search for convenient places to deposit 
their eggs. Towards the end of April, in badly infested areas, 
large numbers of the insects may be seen marching about in this 
way. The eggs bave not yet been found, but lam of opinion that 
they are laid inthe crowns ofthe trees and the perambulations 
of the fertilized females are probably undertaken with the object 
of finding unattacked trees or branches on which to lay them. 
Where they are very numerous the crowns of the trees are so 
thickly covered with the sugary secretion that it is unlikely they 
would choose such positions for egg-laying.! 
The insects disappear about the end of May, in dry years 
at the beginning of this month.? A few are still to be found 
in June, and even in August and September a very few full- 
sized ¢ scales have been found, but these are in all probability 
unfertilized females which had managed to linger on. 
Areas from which reported. 
The at present known habitat of this insect is the drier 
portions of the sal forests on the Siwalik Range of Hills running 
from the Ganges on the east to the Kalesar forest, situated on 

1] have recently (May 1902) obtained eggs from fertilized females kept 
under observation. They are apparently very often laid under the rough 
bark of the sal trees. 
2 The dates of first appearance of the young larve, and consequently of 
the culminating point of the attack when the insects are mature, depend on 
the climatic conditions to which the insects are exposed. The winter of 
1901-1902 has been exceptionally mild, and the scales are at least a month 
more forward in their development than they were at the corresponding 
period of 1900-1901. 
