THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIS1. 237 
their surroundings have casually wandered out of the adjacent 
forest. 
In the first three months of the year they drop their hard 
seed-shaped oval eges whieh fall on the ground and evidently 
remain for some months before the young phasmid hatches out. 
The eggs, oval in shape, measure 5 mm. in length and are brown 
witha curious stripe of creamy white down one side, the apex 
fitted with a saucer-like lid in the centre of which is a conical 
cork-like plug which the baby phasma pushes out on emerg- 
ing. Hach adult female is capable of laying about 300 of these 
eges during the season. 
The more slender bodied male is furnished with large well 
developed hind wings mottled with brownish bands, and can 
fly well, but can be easily identified by the typical’ conical pointed 
spiny head and modified spines and flanges on the legs and 
sides of the abdomenal segments. The male probably lives in 
the tops of the trees and is:a comparatively rare insect. I have 
never seen one alive, and the two specimens in the Depart- 
mental collections are thirty years old. 
In response to my request for information as to the range 
-of this insect outside New South Wales, Mr. Kershaw, Curator 
of the National Museum, Melbourne, informs me that they have 
no record of it being found in Victoria. The specimens in the 
National Museum come from the Clarence River, N.S.W. Mr. 
Heber Longman, Curator of the Queensland Museum, gives a 
list of localities from Brisbane, inland to Toowoomba and Kil- 
larney, and northward to Cairns. In the Macleay Museum col- 
lections there is one from New Guinea, five from Cairns, others 
from the Northern Rivers, to Kiama, the most southern record. 
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
AN INTERESTING SCALE INSECT.—At the June meeting Mr. 
Froggatt had the following interesting exhibits:—A Lecanid 
scale: insect (Cryptes baccatum) so thickly infesting the twigs 
-of the Myall (Acacia pendula) on Quanda Station, Gular, that 
the owner, Mr. George Ryder, states that well grown trees are 
dying apparently from this scale infestation. He writes: “I~ 
have been about here some 40 years and never noticed them on 
the Myall trees before. Some of the trees are already dead, 
and a great many attacked. There are some hundreds of Myall 
trees here that we have been conserving for many years for 
fodder in drought time, like the present, for the sheep. Evi- 
