easily, because his machinery enables him to catch the wheat in the nick of time before it can shell out, while another, with few machines and small team, prefers a wheat that will stand a long time without shelling, no matter if it does strip or thresh with difficulty.

In the following notes, therefore, I have confined myself to facts, and these are such that growers of every shade of opinion will have an interest

in them.

Table showing the ease or difficulty with which the different varieties of wheat grown at the Wagga Experiment Farm, since 1893, were threshed :—

If, now, we group these wheats around certain well-known sorts, such as Talavera, White Velvet, Defiance, we shall arrive at certain general conclusions of greater value than knowledge concerning any one variety. Below I have attempted this in the case of the soft wheats, i.e., the ones generally cultivated for flour.

Table showing the relative ease or difficulty with which different groups or "families" of soft wheat (T. sativum) can be threshed.

We e may clusions:

group

...

Easy to thresh.

Easy or rather easy to thresh.
Rather easy or easy to thresh.
Rather hard to thresh.

Hard to thresh.

also derive from the tables of varieties threshed the following con

1. The hard wheats, or macaroni wheats, of which Medeah and Belo-
tourka may be taken as the type, are harder to thresh than the soft
wheats.

2. The Poulard wheats, of which Algerian and Mummy may be taken as
types, also thresh with greater difficulty than the soft wheats.
3. Weak straw is of no value as an indication of ease in threshing.
4. Earliness or lateness in ripening is no criterion as to ease of threshing.
5. Velvet-chaffed wheats, whether they be bearded or beardless, thresh
harder than the corresponding smooth chaffed sorts.

6. Wheats with crowded heads are generally harder to thresh, other
things being equal.

7. Red-chaffed wheats, with few exceptions, are easier to thresh than white-chaffed sorts.

8. Bearded wheats, other things being equal, are easier to thresh than beardless sorts. This conclusion refers, however, only to the ease with which the grain can be parted from the chaff, and does not refer to the well-known fact that the beards tend to clog up the threshing machine.

In this connection I appeal to the inventors and manufacturers of strippers and threshers to give special attention to constructing machines that will handle bearded wheat. I am convinced that machines can be made that will thresh bearded wheats as perfectly and as conveniently as beardless wheats. Such machines would meet a ready sale, because they would enable farmers to grow certain bearded wheats which are eminently suited to Australian climates, and in many ways more suitable than the sorts now grown.

Forest Insects.

SOME GALL-MAKING COCCIDS.

BY CLAUDE FULLER.

THE Coccidide are better known by such popular terms as Scale-insects Bark-lice, and Mealy-bugs. They are classified by entomologists under the great order Hemiptera, the members of which are easily distinguished from other insects by their beak-like mouths. On account of this peculiar formation of the mouth, they are essentially suctorial in their habits, nourishing themselves upon the juices of plants and animals.

The order is divided into two distinct divisions-the Heteroptera, which includes the true bugs, and the Homoptera, which embraces Cicadide, Aphides, and Seale-insects. The differences between these two sections are well-defined. The true bugs have the beak springing from the front of the head, and the upper or first pair of wings are one-half thick and the other half thin-that is, the basal half is thick and leathery, whilst the tips, which overlap each other, are thin and membranous. In the Homoptera the beak grows underneath and from the hinder part of the head, the wings differing in being of the same consistency throughout, and usually carried in a sloping position against the side of the insect's body.

The family Coccidida is in itself regarded as an anomalous group, its members departing widely from the original type of the order. It is not, therefore, surprising that in such a land of anomalies as Australia the greatest irregularities are found to exist. Such an irregularity is the genus Brachyscelis, the members of which live exclusively upon trees and shrubs of the order Eucalyptus. These insects cause woody-galls of many interesting shapes to grow upon the tree, in the heart of which they live; in the case of the females till death, and of the males until the adult stage is reached.

The popular name "Gall-maker," as with the terms Scale-insect and Mealy-bug, has its origin in the external character exhibited by the insects, but the gall-growth differs from the "meal" of the Mealy-bug and the "scale" of the Bark-louse, insomuch that it is brought into existence at the actual and direct expense of the tissue of the plants, whilst the scales and meal are products of the animals themselves being secreted through pores or openings in the body.

The Male Insect.

Upon issuing from the gall, in which it has undergone its transformations, the male resembles a fly having two white wings. It has very long antennæ and legs, which give it quite a spidery appearance. The antennæ are hairy, and consist of about ten joints; the basal joints are short, and, with the exception of the terminal, the others are rather long and constricted. The legs are bairy, and bear several spines, a pair of distinct upper digitules, and are furnished with simple claws. The abdomen is long and cylindrical, the

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