Notarcha clytalis is a bright yellow moth with an irregular wavy line of black crossing the outer portions of the wings, and another shorter band near the base of each fore wing. The gregarious larvae are green spotted with black; they roll the leaves on the terminal branches of the Kurrajong into regular slender masses up to a foot or more in length, in which they finally pupate. It has a wide range over the country, rendering these handsome trees very unsightly when numerous. The larvae of Godara comalis is a greenish yellow caterpillar barred with lighter yellow at the back of each segment, and lightly clothed with long brown hairs; it feeds upon the leaves of the horse radish and turnip. The moth measures 1 inch across the wings; the fore pair are buff irregularly mottled with dark brown; the hind wings of a uniform silvery white with a brown patch at the apical margin.

Mecyna polygonalis defoliates the tree lucerne (Citysus prolifera); I have also bred it from broom bushes in gardens at Armidale, N.S.W., and on a native bush (Templetonia) in the western plains, so that it has a wide range: Mr. Lyell tells me it is very destructive to the foliage of willows in some parts of Victoria. The caterpillars are slender light green creatures spotted with black and white shaded with yellow on the sides; when full grown they spin a loose silken cocoon. The moth is slightly under 1½ inches across the wings; the fore pair are light brown, and the hind pair each blackish brown round the outer portion and bright yellow in the centre. The two introduced bee moths, Achraea grisella and Galleria melonella, belong to a division of this family: the moths lay their eggs about the hive, the grubs crawl in and feed upon the wax which they mat together with silken web, and if overlooked they destroy the whole of the hive; in the days of the old-fashioned hives they were a great source of trouble to bee-keepers, but now with well constructed bar-hives they are easily checked. The first named is of a uniform brown colour with the fore wings rounded; the second has the wings arcuate behind and irregularly mottled.

Aphomia latro measures about 1½ inches across its slender somewhat pointed fore wings; is of a general buff colour shot with fine black spots, and divided down the centre of the fore wings with a broad dull white parallel stripe; the hind wings silvery grey. The larvae live in small communities feeding upon and matting together the scape of the flower stalk of the grass trees, in which they pupate within an elongate white silken cocoon.

The Peach Moth, Conogethes punctiferalis, is a bright yellow moth thickly mottled with black spots. The larvae attack peaches when ripening, eating and webbing the surface and pupating on the side of the stone. It is common in the northern districts of N.S.W.

The “Mediterranean Flour Moth,” Ephestia kuhniella, though not an Australian moth, is worthy of note, for it is widely distributed over the country, and causes a lot of annoyance by the bad habits of its larvae of webbing the flour into masses with its silken strands. Another cosmopolitan moth, Plodia interpunctella, is known in America as the “Indian Meal Moth,” though it feeds upon all kinds of dried foods; it is a much smaller moth of a general brown tint, the apical portion of the wings much darker than the basal part. This moth also is very common in Australia.

Family 16. Bell Moths.
TORTRICIDAE.

These moths have slender bodies; short generally broad fore wings, truncate at the extremities; the hind pair also broad; and when they are at rest during the day time their wings are folded flat down. The costal margins of the fore wings are much rounded when the wings are folded, giving a general bell shaped form; from which these moths take their popular name. They are sometimes called “leaf twisters” or “leaf rollers,” but differ from the true gregarious leaf roller caterpillars in seldom matting a number of the leaves together. The caterpillars also feed upon seeds.

The members of the Genus Cacaecia are interesting insects because several have been found attacking fruit in orchards: C. postvittana, was recorded by Olliff gnawing in apples like a codlin moth. It measures ¾ of an inch across the wings; is of a general dull yellow marked with brown, but its colour and markings are very variable. It has a wide range over Tasmania and the eastern coast of the mainland into Queensland; and about Sydney the caterpillars feed upon half a dozen different common native shrubs. French in his Handbook of the Destructive Insects of Victoria Pt. I. 1891 has named and figured one, C. responsana, the “Light Brown Apple Moth,” as an apple pest in Victoria; this is probably C. postvittana. C. Australasiae is a larger species of a dark brown colour; the fore wings are lightly mottled or marbled. C. lythrodana is a smaller, similar coloured moth, but the colouration is finer. Paramorpha aquilina is a tiny, creamy-grey moth not quite ½ an inch across the wings: in its native state it frequents damp or marshy ground, flying low among the herbage. The larva is a short, pale green grub that, in several of the orange growing districts, attacks the ripening oranges; boring through the skin, it feeds upon the pith between the rind and flesh, where it finally pupates and causes the orange to turn yellow and drop off.

The Lucerne Moth, Tortrix glaphyriana, is a small, dark yellow moth about ½ an inch across the wings; the fore pair are light buff with a silvery tint, blotched with irregular patches of dark brown. The caterpillars are dark green with scattered white hairs on the segments; they are a regular pest in lucerne paddocks in the Hunter River district, N.S. Wales, feeding upon the lucerne tops and drawing them together with silken threads. Arotrophora ombrodelta is a handsome little moth which I bred out of the seed pods of Acacia farnesiana growing near Lismore, N.S.W.; the yellowish brown caterpillar has a pink stripe down the back, and each segment is spotted with green; they devour the seeds and then pupate inside the pod close to the hole, through which the pupa works its head just before the moth is ready to emerge; the anal segments being ringed with fine spines enable it to screw right out of the hard pod, so that the moth is not damaged. The moth, under 1 inch across the wings, has the fore pair chocolate brown, mottled and darkest at the tips; the hind pair are brown. Meyrick says that the larva of another species feeds enclosed in a short, stiff, silken tube among the leaves of Lomantia silarfolia; and a third feeds in the flower cone of our common honeysuckle (Banksia serrata). The Codlin Moth, Carpocapsa pomonella, the world-wide pest to apple growers, is found in most parts of Australia; but though the reddish tinted caterpillar is universally known, there are a great many orchardists who do not know the moth, though it is easily recognised from all other species by the copper coloured blotch on the apical portion of the fore-wings.

We now come to an anomalous group, whose exact place in the classification of Lepidoptera has puzzled entomologists, but which is usually placed at the end of this family. These are the Cryptophaginae, whose larvae, naked, slender caterpillars, live in shallow chambers or short tunnels in the branches of the smaller forest trees. They cover the entrance to their burrow with a screen of loose silken web covered with gnawed bark and droppings. Resting during the day, they come out at night and, biting off some of the leaves, drag them down into the burrow (the ends often sticking out through the web) to feed on at their leisure. When full grown they pupate within the burrow. C. unipunctata is a very handsome satiny white moth about 1½ inches across the wings; the fore pair each have a single black dot in the centre; the abdomen is black fringed with yellow hairs forming a tuft at the extremity. In its native state the caterpillars feed upon the branches of our common honeysuckle (Banksia serrata), but have a very great liking for the branches of cherry trees in the orchards; where neglected, they often kill large branches by their attacks. C. irrorata is a larger moth, measuring up to 2 inches across the wings, the fore pair being very broad and square at the extremities; they are of a uniform greyish brown, slightly mottled with a darker pattern round the outer margins; the hind pair are silvery brown fringed round the edges. The larva feeds on the stems of Casuarina. C. rubriginosa is nearly as large as the last; the fore wings are reddish brown. There is a salmon tint on the thorax extending on to the base of the fore wings; the hind wings are brownish yellow. The larvae feed in the stems and branches of several species of Acacia.

Family 17. Grain and Clothes Moths.
MICRO-LEPIDOPTERA.

In concluding the Lepidoptera I place these families, often grouped together under the comprehensive term Micro-lepidoptera, in the above division. Most of these moths are small, but the group is very important in that it contains some of the most destructive pests of grain, cloth, &c., and they are world-wide in their range. Meyrick has made a special study of these moths, and has classified and described an immense number in a series of papers in the Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1878–1904.

The larvae of the different groups are usually slender naked grubs with a few scattered hairs, and are sometimes legless; but others again have from 14 to 18 pairs of legs. They feed upon all kinds of material, sometimes forming tubular cells out of their food, while others move about quite freely. The moths may be obtained by beating or shaking bushes, or breeding them from the material among which they feed.

The Family Oecophoridae is the most extensive in Australia; in his first paper on the group in 1883, Meyrick estimated that over 2,000 species would be discovered, and later in 1889 he had actually described 756 species, most of them new. The Genus Philobota contains 105 described species, many of them handsome brightly marked little moths. P. arabella, slightly over ¾ of an inch across the wings, is of a general greyish brown tint, with the central portions of the fore pair pale yellow edged with brown forming wedge-shaped patches. P. catascia, slightly larger, has the fore-wings silvery white, slightly clouded; the hind ones dull yellow in the centre fringed with light brown. P. productella a little smaller, is all silvery white, with yellowish tints in the hind pair; and P. agnesella is a larger silvery one with a narrow irregular dark stripe along the centre of each fore wing from the base to the apex. P. gascialis, a very different larger winged form, has the fore pair dark orange yellow, each with a broad brown blotch through the centre, and tip dark brown; the hind pair dull brown fringed with fine plumes. Macrobatha platychroa is under ½ an inch across the wings; the fore pair are marked with alternate bars of white and black, and the hind pair greyish brown. Heliocausta hemitelis, about twice the size, has the fore wings yellow, tipped and blotched with purplish brown, the blotch on each hind margin angular; the hind wings brown. Zonopetala decisiana, under ½ an inch across the wings, has the fore pair white, each with a large brown blotch across the centre, and others at the tip, and with a band of the same colour across the thorax; the hind wings light buff and fringed with hairs. The caterpillar of Ocystola hemicalypta constructs a protective covering about as thick and long as a large wax match out of a section of a gum twig, in which it lives and feeds after hollowing it out like a tube; these curious cocoons are not uncommon in the bush on the leaves of eucalypts.

The Gelechiadae is another large family recently revised by Meyrick (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1904); he says that these moths are not so numerous as in Europe, but as they are such small, inconspicuous insects there are probably a great number still to be discovered. He describes 274 species, of which 207 are new, and 85 of which belong to the Genus Protolechia. Several species that infest grain belong to this group: Gelechia simplicella, a tiny little brown moth, has pointed slender wings, the fore pair nearly black, with a very distinctive irregular white bar across each apical half. Meyrick has placed it in the Genus Anacampsis; it has a wide range over Tasmania and Australia: I have bred it from the foliage of Soy beans, which the larvae matted together and seriously damaged. Sitotroga cerealella is a tiny yellowish brown moth with pointed wings. It has a wide range round the Australian coast, and has been introduced from Europe or America with corn upon which the larvae feed. It is known as the “Angoumois Grain Moth” from the province of that name in France, where in 1760 it swarmed over the country and nearly caused a famine. I have bred it from wheat at Bingara N.S.W.

The Elachistidae were described and revised by Meyrick (Pro. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1897), who lists 254 species, most of which were new. He says: “The species of this family are almost all small and therefore often neglected by collectors. Larva with 10 prolegs seldom almost apodal, usually mining in leaves, or amongst seeds or in stems, sometimes case-bearing, rarely amongst spun leaves.”

The larvae of the members of the Genus Batrachedra, according to Meyrick, feed usually upon seeds. B. arenosella, a small dull pale yellow moth with spotted fore wings and grey hind ones, is common over Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. The larvae web the seeds and stalks of sedges together, and form a cocoon among the seeds. I have bred a species of Batrachedra, B. sparsella, Walk., but can find no record of this species in Meyrick’s list. The larva of this moth spins a web on the trunks of trees that are infested with scale insects which they devour, finally forming an elongate cocoon attached to the bark; in the orchard they destroy white louse on oranges, and San Jose scale on peach trees. Strathmopoda melanochra, a little brown moth, has the fore wings dull white with metallic reflections and darker markings; the wings are very finely fringed on the hind margins.

The Family Plutellidae contains one very destructive little pest in the Diamond-backed Cabbage Moth, Plutella cruciferarum; the slender green larvae gnaw holes in the leaves and pupate in net-like cocoons on the foliage. It has a world-wide range and is very common in Australia.

The Family Tineidae, containing the clothes moths, is defined by Meyrick (Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1892) as the rough-headed Tineina, with the palpi strongly developed in front of the head, and the hind wings usually as broad as the fore wings, sometimes narrower but seldom broader. Larva with 16 legs, or legs wanting.

The Genus Xystmatodoma contains 29 species, of which X. guildingi is a typical form described by Scott in his “Australian Lepidoptera”; it is a slender-winged dull brown moth, the larva of which crawls about in a stout silken sack like that of an immature case moth, and feeds upon low scrub. Scardia australasialla is a handsome little moth, which is figured in Donovan’s “Insects of New Holland”; it measures about 1¼ inches across the wings; the fore pair are dull brown but so thickly covered with shining white to pale yellow spots that it looks very brilliant; the hind pair are brown fringed with long plumes. Blabophanes ethelella is about ¾ of an inch across the wings; the fore pair are dark brown finely spotted with white and some have a comparatively large white dot in the centre of each wing, the hind margin also edged with white; the hind pair light brown. The Genus Tinea is represented by a number of both native and introduced species. The common clothes moth, Tinea pellionella, is too well known to need description; it is world-wide in its range, and lays its eggs upon clothes on which the larvae feed and finally use particles to construct their cocoons. T. tapetzella feeds among furs and skins. Tineola biselliella is a third cosmopolitan species of clothes moth. Tinea fuscipunctella feeds upon dried animal matter, refuse and such like; it also is world wide in its range. Among our native species, T. nectaria is under ½ an inch across the wings; the fore pair have the basal two thirds silvery yellow with the tips black; the hind pair dull yellow darkest at the tips. Meyrick says that these larvae make cases out of eucalyptus leaves, but my specimens were bred out of blister-like excrescences or galls upon the leaves of a shrub in the Botanic Gardens Sydney. Thudaca obliquella, about 1 inch across the wings, is a beautiful little silvery white moth, with the fore wings deep yellow thickly marked with parallel and transverse bars of silvery white; the hind pair broad, silvery, lightly clouded, and fringed behind with long plumes.

The Epipyropidae comprise a small group of moths that have been raised to the rank of a family by Perkins (Bulletin I. part 2, “Leaf Hoppers and their Natural Enemies,” Hawaii 1905), though it would probably be more correct to place them as a sub-family of the Tineidae. Sharp (Cambridge Natural History: Insects part II.) places them in the Limacodidae. They are small black, grey or brown moths, with small eyes; no ocelli; the palpi wanting or very minute, and the mouth parts little developed. They have remarkable parasitic habits in the caterpillar state living upon the backs of different leaf hoppers (Homoptera) and feeding upon the waxy or sugary secretions discharged by their hosts. Perkins describes 7 new Australian species, which are placed in three genera, based on the neuration of the wings. Three species come from Cairns, N. Queensland, and four from the neighbourhood of Sydney. Heteropsyche melanochroma measures under ½ an inch across the outspread wings and is of a general black or fuscous colour with purple tints on the fore wings. Koebele records it as common about Sydney, parasitic upon a number of different Fulgorids and Jassids.

Rothschild (Novitates Zoologicae 1906) has named another species, Epipyrops doddi, after the well known collector, P. F. Dodd, who had worked out its life history in North Queensland.