A FURTHER NOTE ON MONOPHLEBUS STEBBINGI. 319 

have a small wad of pulled out cotton wool attached to its 
abdominal segments and protruding out all round in a cloud 
from the three ventral posterior segments of its abdomen. 
The eggs, as stated above, are laid within this material, from 
400 to 450 or even more being laid by one scale. 
Present observations show that, when intent on egg-laying, 
the female scale leaves the part of the tree on which she has 
been feeding and usually searches out some nook or cranny 
beneath the rough bark or a sheltered spot beneath stones, 
refuse, wood, etc., on the ground, and conceals herself before 
laying her eggs. After the eggs in the cottony sac have been 
extruded from the body little but the skin remains, the insect 
dies, and the dried shrivelled skin remains as a partial covering to 
the eggs. Egg-laying would appear to last from a fortnight to 
three weeks, after which period both the large white ? scale 
and the winged ¢ almost entirely disappear from the forest, 
the latter entirely. What I take to be the ¢ pupal cases were 
discovered on a sal tree felled in January 1901; they were on 
the outside of the bark, where it was almost in contact with the 
ground. Amidst a mass of cottony material mixed up with 
dried leaves, twigs, etc., the following were found :— 
(2) Dead ¢ scales about }” in length and immature. 
(6) Immature and mature dead winged d insects and 
portions of their wings, bodies, etc. 
(c) Also amongst the cottony material small, dried, dark 
orange larve were found of the same shape as 
the @ scale, 4th to 4th” in length. These may 
have been immature ?’s or they may have been 
male larve, 
(d) Small, light-brown pupal cases of d (?) insect, gth” 
long, with an opening at the top by which the 
insect had crawled out. 
(e) What looked like shrivelled pink egg skins. 
In one or two instances I found portions of ¢ insects half 
protruding from the light brown cases, and this latter fact 
leads me to conclude that the winged males come out as such 
from these shells. Further, it may be that the pink shrivelled 
