308 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL gouRNAL. [1 ApRit, 1898. 
Entomology. 
ORANGE-PIERCING MOTHS—Fam. OPHIDERIN&. 
By HENRY TRYON, 
Entomologist. 
Prares XVIII. ro XXII. 
Year after year, during the months of March, April, and May, growers of 
citraceous fruit throughout the coastal districts of the colony, complain of loss 
that they experience through their round oranges falling after exhibiting the 
following symptoms :—On one or more faces they present a bruise-like appear- 
ance, and within this area of altered tissue occur small circular perforations 
through which juice very gradually exudes. This may be remarked even when, 
though full-grown, they are still green; the site of the injury being charac- 
terised by a pale-yellow colouration that is very conspicuous on the general 
green hue of the rind. 
This injury, as shown by a botanist residing at Rockhampton, named A. 
Thozet (v7d. pp. 314 and 315), as early as 1869, is occasioned by the attacks of 
large moths of one or more kinds, belonging to the family Ophiderine. 
Tur Motus.—These are named Ophideres fullonica, Linné; Menas 
salaminia, Cramer; and Argadesa materna, Linné. 
They are all alike in that they possess the following family characters, 
being large robust moths, with stout bodies extending not, or slightly, beyond 
the hindwings. They have both their thorax and hindbody crested and densely 
clothed. The eyes are large; the antenna, or feelers, simple and non-pectinated. 
The fore and hind wings are strongly contrasted, owing to their different 
colours. The former are dark-hued, exhibiting dark-olivaceous green, brown, 
or greyish mauve ground-colour or pattern, whereas the hindwings are always 
bright orange-yellow and more or less -marked with black. The expanse of the 
forewings is from 23 inches to nearly 4 inches, according to the sex or species. 
They are, therefore, both large and conspicuously handsome insects. 
Meenas salaminia, Cramer (Plate X1X., Fig. 1), unlike the others mentioned, 
has the outer border of the forewings straight and plane, instead of being 
arched and scalloped as with them. It is also exceptional in having these 
organs dark-green with golden reflections, and in having a broad purplish-grey 
band along the anterior border and a narrow similar band on the outer. In its 
ease both sexes are alike. 
Othreis fullonica, Linné (Plate XVIII, Figs. 1 and 2), has the forewings 
more sharply pointed than are those of either of the other species considered ; 
their external border is, moreover, strongly bowed, though not scalloped (as 
in A. materna). Two lines, also, arising at and } respectively along the 
fore-border cross the wing-surface and tend /to converge on the hind-border, 
dividing the wing-surface, of rich dark-brown of different shades on a pale 
mauye-grey ground colour that is here displayed, into well-marked inner, middle, 
and outer areas. The male (Plate XVIII., Fig. 2) in this species is readily 
distinguished from its consort by the more or less uniform livery of its fore- 
wings, that are dark ferruginous or vinous brown. Moreover, in the female, 
the outer of the foregoing lines is toothed or dentate, instead of being evenly 
curyed, and has a white triangular blotch in one.of its denticulations pointing 
inwards; there occurs also a conspicuous sub-triangular dark-brown blotch in 
the centre of the wing. 
