COCCINELLA SP. 327 
et ot 

to one side. At the same moment it attaches itself to the twig 
by means of the adhesive pad at the end of its body. The 
scale at first makes no movement, but after a minute or two 
it commences to move its legs and antennz about, at first lazily 
as is its habit when walking, but later on more vigorously 
As it begins to do this a bright canary yellow stream of liquid 
material pours down from the scale on to the twig. This 
exudation from the wound continues for about 3-4 minutes 
after which it stops, the rest of the material going into the 
coccinellid larva who has now got his mouth parts firmly fixed 
into the coccid. The latter makes vigorous attempts to get 
away and being so much larger than its enemy, often even as 
much as thrice its size, it at times stretches out the lady-bird ° 
larva to its full length, the segments under the tension becoming 
considerably elongated. The latter, however, keeps its position 
on the twig by means of its sucker pad with the greatest ease. 
Practically only its mouth, first pair of legs and adhesive pad 
are used in its feeding operations, the other two pairs of legs 
being held backwards almost against the side of the body. 
Under the sucking process the formerly fat white juicy scale 
insect shrinks to a shrivelled, wizened, dried up mass of skin. 
The larva’s mouth consists of a tube ending in a swollen knob 
where it joins the head, which is greenish yellow in colour. 
This is probably in the nature of a sucker as well since it 
exerts considerable leverage upon the scale. Larvae watched 
have spent between 8 and g hours clinging to and feeding 
upon one scale, at the end but a shrivelled black skin remain- 
ing. The vitality of the coccid is very great since at the end 
of 6 or 7 hours of this continued sucking it is still alive slowly 
moving its legs or antenne. 
When about to pupate the larve would seem to become gre- 
garious as the pupe are often found in numbers close together 
on the upper or underside of the leaves or twigs. This may 
have been due to the enormous number of the insects present 
in the forests in April, but the gregarious collections of pupz 
were too marked to have been entirely due to accident. The 
beetles are very gregarious. During the heat of the day, when 
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