Adult female elliptical, convex, hollow beneath, brown in colour, usually affecting the twigs and branches of the plant in preference to the leaves. Apparently naked, but on close inspection found to retain at least portions of the thin felted covering. Dorsal surface covered with great numbers of spines similar to those of the second stage; ventral surface with many small spiny hairs. Antennæ of seven joints. The feet have large coxæ and femora; the tibia is only about half as long as the tarsus; the lower digitules are only fine hairs.
Adult male of normal form of Lecanidinæ: colour brown. On the head are six visual organs: two dorsal eyes, two ventral, and two ocelli. Antennæ reddish, ten-jointed; the second joint a good deal thicker than the rest, the second, third, and fourth joints the longest; the last three moniliform; all the joints hairy. On the five last joints are several hairs with knobbed extremities. Feet slender, hairy; digitules fine hairs. Abdominal spike short and rather broad. On each side of the base of the spike is a tubercle bearing a pair of longish setæ; each pair of setæ becomes enclosed in a long white cottony thread, and the two threads form conspicuous "tails," as is common with most males of the Coccid family.
Habitat—On Olearia Haastii, Botanical Gardens, Wellington. This is an alpine plant cultivated in the Gardens, and the insect probably came with it from the mountains.
This species is distinguished from E. spinosus by the great number of spiny spinnerets on the dorsum of the female and by the tubular character of the fringe.
The curious and exceptional character of a tibia shorter than the tarsus in the adult female, as observed above, is found only in this genus and some Acanthococcidæ.
52. Eriochiton spinosus, Maskell.
Ctenochiton spinosus, Maskell, N.Z. Trans., Vol. XI., 1878, p. 212; Vol. XII., 1879, p. 292; Vol. XIV., 1881, p. 218; Vol. XVII., 1884, p. 25.
([Plate XIII.], Fig. 2.)
Test of female white, thin, formed of felted threads excreted from spiny spinnerets; inconspicuous at all stages, and often absent on the adult, but distinguishable on the larva and the second stage. The excreting spinnerets are almost all at the edge of the body, and the fringe is formed of feather-like segments, each segment corresponding to a spine.