342 MONOGRAPH OF THE GENUS SYSTHKMIS, 



wriggled past hi in, lie snapped at tliem again and again. At 

 every thi'ee or four tries only, he succeeded in catcliiiig one. But 

 so eagerly were they devoured that he accounted for nearl}^ fifty 

 in the course of ten minutes. After that he continued to snap 

 at them occasionally, without apparently any further desire to 

 eat them. 



These larvee are very clumsy, hut are capable of running fairly 

 quickly when they have dragged themselves free from most of 

 the surrounding mud. When full-fed, they crawl about on the 

 surface of the mud or sand for days, being all the time only 

 partially covered with mud. They seem quite unable to ascend 

 a stick or stem rising from the water, but crawl out into the 

 sedge or grass first, probably to get drier. Finally they ascend 

 a stem in a most clumsy manner, and emerge in all sorts of 

 curious positions — -bent sideways, twisted nearly double, and 

 often nearly upside down. In my aquaria, larvae would con- 

 tinually get out over the side, and crawl far away into a corner 

 of the room; so that sometimes I found the newly emerged insect 

 on the window-curtain, and never found the exuviae at all. 

 Others failed to emerge, and the dead bodies of the larvae were 

 found hidden in all sorts of localities. Only a very few ascended 

 the sticks placed against rocks or wood in convenient positions 

 for them. 



Taking the nymphs at random, I have bred an almost equal 

 number of both sexes, the females being slightly more abundant. 

 This shews that the rarity of the female on the swamps is due 

 only to her retiring habits. 



The general cliaracters of the nymphs of Si/ntheinis having 

 already been indicated, I now pass to the detailed description of 

 the ovum and the full-fed nymph. 



O v u-m about 1 mm. long, by 0'8 mm. broad, spheroidal, very 

 slightly pointed at the upper end where it is attached to the main 

 egg-mass. Colour yellow, darkening to orange on exposure to air, 

 and becoming less transparent(Plate viii.,fig.l). 



Nym ph ('fully grown): total length 21 mm., abdomen 15 mm.; 

 width of head 5 mm.; wing-cases 6 mm. long; antennae 2*7 mm. 

 Colour dark brown; very hairy(P]ate viii., fig. 2). 



I 



