This is a family containing about 1,400 described species divided into thirteen sub-families, but many of the latter are very restricted in their numbers, the majority coming under the typical sub-family LYGAEINAE. Their general characters are similar to those of the Coreidae except that the antennae are inserted below the eyes, and the head is not so flattened and more angular in front. They are smaller bugs of more delicate structure, and their prevailing colours are brown or black variegated with red and yellow; some of them, such as the Chinch Bug of North America, are very destructive pests. As they have no distinctive group name I have adopted Professor Comstock’s name of “Chinch Bugs.” The LYGAEINAE contain most of the bright coloured species, often marked with red; the wing covers are usually of a somewhat delicate texture. _Astacops laticeps_, about ⅓ of an inch in length, is a slender black bug with the head and sides of the elytra bright red. _Scopiastes vitticeps_, about the same size, has the head, thorax, and sides of the body red. Both these insects are common on the grass and field crops on the Northern Rivers of N.S. Wales. _Lygaeus hospes_ measures ½ an inch in length, is of the typical elongate form, and is black marked with bright red forming a broad indistinct cross on the basal portions of the elytra. It has a wide range from China and India to Australia and New Caledonia. _L. mactans_ is a much smaller insect, with the head, base of thorax, and the greater part of each elytron bright red. It has a wide range over Australia, and is also recorded from Fiji. _L. decoratus_, about ½ an inch in length, has the whole of the head, thorax, and sides of the elytra banded with red and black; it comes from Queensland. The Cotton Bug, _Oncopeltus quadriguttatus_, figured in my notes in the Agricultural Gazette 1901, should be according to Horvath _O. sordidus_, Dallas, though the latter name is given as a synonym of the first in L. and S.’s Catalogue. It measures ½ an inch in length, is of a general black colour, with the head and two depressions in the centre of the thorax dull red, and the scutellum and basal half of each elytron deep orange red; the abdomen is dull red and clothed with short down. They lay their eggs to form a ring round a twig, sometimes as many as a hundred in a cluster; the larvae are flat and almost circular in form, of a general red colour mottled with metallic blue spots, and the legs and antennae are dark coloured. This bug is common on the cultivated cotton plants about the Richmond River, and ranges from Sydney into Queensland.