THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 83 
found upon the leaves; they are slender, cylindrical tubes, and 
bell-shaped at the apex. One of the most curious of these 
galls is that made by the female of Apiomorpha duplex, which, 
growing directly from the side of a slender twig, is produced 
into a stout, four-sided gall, sometimes three inches in length, 
and having a keyhole-like slit at the apex ; each onter side at 
the apex of the gall has a long, tapering, flattened, sometimes 
straight and sometimes curling appendage which often attains 
a length of six inches. A. munita is a similar, but smaller, 
species of “horned” gall. The small males of each of the 
foregoing galls often form great masses of contorted tissue 
composed of immense numbers of short, simple tubes, some- 
times referred to as “ vegetable coral.” 
Turiripa.—There are a number of curious galls formed by 
members of the order Thysanoptera, a peculiarity onl y known 
in Java and Australia, as the typical forms common in Europe 
live, like aphis, upon the foliage, and are known as “black 
fly.”’ They form three different kinds of galls. The primitive 
ones are made simply by rolling over of the edges of the leaves, 
so that often both edges curl towards each other and form two 
rolls. The second group attack the terminal buds and pro- 
duce thin, biscuit-like structures, forming irregular, rounded, 
corrugated masses. In the third group the insects attack the 
leaves, and often abort the whole leaf into a bubble-shaped 
gall containing hundreds of insects. These are most common 
on the different Acacias growing in the Western country; 
e—_—_—_—_—_———————— 
MANNER OF EGG-LAYING OF THE DRAGON- 
FLY (LHSTHS LEDA), 
(By W. B. Gurney.) 
1 
THe exact manner in which this common dragon-fly deposits 
its eggs in the tissue of pond plants has not, to my knowledge, 
been recorded, and the following brief account of observations 
made on the 29th March, 1907, is therefore given :—On this 
date—a warm, sunny day—numbers of this common, blue- 
banded, slender-bodied dragon-fly were observed flying about 
a pond at Botany (Sydney). A large percentage were flying 
in pairs, the anal appendages of the male clasping the neck of 
the female. A pair would settle on a weed projecting from 
the water, and the female commence inserting her eges into 
the plant tissue, puncturing a hole and inserting a single egg 
at one and the same time by means of her short, bristle-like 
ovipositor. When thus depositing eges, the abdomen of the 
female may be much bent, while the tip is worked over the 
surface of the leaf, or stem, and the eges are sown in, as it 
were, by a:series of quick insertions and withdrawals of the 
