An Account of the Insects Noxious to Agriculture and Plants in New Zealand: The Scale Insects (Coccididae) — John Shaqi
An Account of the Insects Noxious to Agriculture and Plants in New Zealand: The Scale Insects (Coccididae)Maskell, William Miles
Science
An Account of the Insects Noxious to Agriculture and Plants in New Zealand: The Scale Insects (Coccididae)
Maskell, William Miles
Insects -- New Zealand; Scale insects
1. _The egg_ is, as far as can be made out, precisely the same as that
of the female, though Dr. Signoret believes that in one or two species
there may perhaps be minute differences.
2. _The larva_ is, as stated above, similar to that of the female.
3. _The pupa._ Here the first distinctions between the sexes may be
noted, and these are principally observable in the cocoons or puparia,
rather than in the insect itself--at least to outward appearance.
The male pupa is, in all cases--even in those where the female pupa
is naked--enclosed in some kind of covering. In the _Diaspidinæ_ the
puparium is formed partly of fibrous secretion and partly of discarded
skin; only, as the full-grown male emerges from it as a fly, and does
not remain on the plant, there can be only one such skin--that of the
larva; consequently it is easy to distinguish the male puparia from
the shields of the adult females by the presence of only one discarded
pellicle instead of two. In the _Lecanidinæ_ and the _Coccidinæ_
the male puparia are distinguishable usually by a narrower and more
cylindrical form than those of the females, where these latter are
covered; in the naked species the males are generally in white waxy or
cottony cocoons.
Examination of the pupæ in these coverings will generally show more or
less developed processes on the back and sides, which are so evidently
the rudiments of the future wings that the presence of a male is
not doubtful. In other respects the male pupæ are not always to be
distinguished from the females.
3. _The full-grown male_ has been described above. It is usually
easy to procure specimens, provided the pupæ are obtained. If any of
these, in their coverings, are put into pillboxes with glass tops, or
any place where light reaches them, they will generally produce the
full-grown insect sometimes in a few days, sometimes after several
weeks. The time of year for this seems very variable. Males emerge from
the puparia apparently indifferently (in New Zealand) in summer or
winter.
CHAPTER III.
PRODUCTS OF THE COCCIDIDÆ.
[Waxy or cottony matter: the "honeydew" and the black fungus--"smut" or
"black blight"--growing upon it.]
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