Pe AC R. 
THE number and variety of the insect pests which live on. the 
plants of New Zealand, whether native or introduced, and the 
damage which they frequently do, form the excuse for the 
appearance of this work. The descriptions of these insects in 
the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, or in works 
published in Europe and America, are not easily accessible to 
the general reader, and are also much scattered and fragmentary. 
It was thought therefore that the time had arrived when the 
information which might be useful to gardeners and tree- 
growers, as well as to students, might be summarized and 
brought together in a compendious form, and the present volume 
is an attempt towards this. 
In order to render this work complete a second volume is 
necessary, which should include the large number of other 
destructive insects preying upon various plants. For example, 
the “ pme-blight” (Kermapiis), the ‘“ American blight” 
(Eriosoma), the “black leech” (Tenthredo), the cabbage cater- 
pillar, the turnip “ fly,”’ the various aphides on roses, geraniums. 
&e., the grass-grub (Odontria), the codlin-moth, the borers, 
weevils, wireworms, and a number of others are in different 
places damaging trees and plants, and it would be useful to 
collect in one volume information regarding them. ‘The author 
has had in contemplation the preparation of such a volume, and 
it is hoped that it may be at some future time published. 
Meanwhile the present is offered as, at least as far as it 
goes, a full description of one of the most general as well as the 
most noxious families of plant-parasites. The plates have been 
especially prepared with a double object: first, that gardeners 
and tree-growers might be able easily to recognize the kind of 
