Habitat—For the adult female and larva the trunks of trees and shrubs in forests, or rocks and bushes in open country, Otago, Nelson, Canterbury, Wellington. For the second stage the stems and roots of Muhlenbeckia adspersa (complexa?); Sumner Road, Lyttelton; Evans Bay, Wellington: Rhipogonum scandens (supplejack); Riccarton Bush, Canterbury; Nelson; Wellington. On Muhlenbeckia the waxy tests are often largest and most numerous underground. Male insects sometimes found clustering, attached to females.
This is a very large and peculiar species, its transformations and changes of secretion being abnormal. It cannot be said to be greatly harmful; but the odour of the second stage is unpleasant.
67. Cœlostoma wairoense, Maskell.
N.Z. Trans., Vol. XVI., 1883, p. 141.
([Plate XXI.], Fig. 2.)
Adult female, female of second stage, and larva unknown.
Adult male very nearly resembling that of C. zealandicum; body red or purplish, wings blue with red nervures. Length of body, about 1/6in. Eyes prominent, facetted. Antennæ of ten joints, slender, with fine hairs. Feet as in C. zealandicum, but with fewer hairs. Digitules twenty-four, all springing from the claw, none from the tarsus. Haltere, abdominal spike, penis, and abdomen as in C. zealandicum; but the circular marks on the segments in this species are multilocular.
Male pupa bright-red, enclosed in a cylindrical sac of white cotton. Pupæ occurring in numerous colonies.
Habitat—On Phormium tenax, Leptospermum scoparium (manuka), Northern Wairoa, Auckland.
The female of this species will, when found, probably nearly resemble that of C. zealandicum: at present the great number of digitules on the foot of the male sufficiently distinguish it.