126 
BRAZILIAN ORTIIOPTERA 
segment and a regularly arcuato-truncate ultimate segment, 
range to types as described from the Spring Creek representation. 
It is evident from these summaries that the size difference is 
not of specific value, while the proportion of spurs and meta- 
tarsus is variable, and the form of the margins of the penultimate 
and ultimate ventral abdominal segments not of specific diagnos- 
tic value in the present instance. 
In coloration all the Rio Madeira specimens are of the pale 
type, but this is certainly due in large part to the action of al- 
cohol. The Igarape-assu female is a relatively dark specimen. 
Of the four species of the genus recently described by Bruner 
from South America,^^ the Rio Madeira material shows some 
approach to his atratus, but we cannot consider this as distinct 
from apicialis after the examinations we have made, nor can we 
make atratus synonymous without more data than that contained 
in the description. 
Brunner^® has recorded this species from Buenos Aires and the 
Misiones, Argentina, Giglio-Tos^® reported it, with a query, as 
the synonymous mixtus from Urucum, southern Matto Grosso, 
Brazil, while Scudder has quoted Bolivar as reporting it from 
Ecuador. 
Ellipes minuta Scudder 
1862. T[ridactylus] minutus Scudder, Boston Journ. Nat. Hist., vii, p. 425. 
[Southern Illinois.] 
Para, Para. (C. F. Baker.) One female. 
It is most unfortunate at this date, and in the state of our knowledge of the 
instability of the features of the cephalic tibiae in this genus, and also of the 
tone of coloration, which any large series shows to be unimportant, to find 
“new” species based largely on these features. In the Gryllidae, more so than 
in any other group of Orthoptera, it is of the utmost importance for the de- 
scriber to secure a proper conception of variation within species, and also to 
keep in close touch with the recent quantitative and variational studies of the 
group treated. This does not seem to have been done in Bruner’s paper on 
South American Crickets (Ann. Carneg. Mus., x, j)p. 344 to 428, (1916) ), 
as considerable of the recent work on the genera Nemobius, Gryllus, Mio- 
gryllus, Neoxabea, Cyrtoxipha and Anaxipha has been overlooked or disre- 
garded, while morj)hological features, such as the perforation of the cephalic 
tibiae in Miogryllus, Gryllodes, Anaxipha and Cyrtoxipha, which have been 
tested out and found wanting as diagnostic specific characters, still appear as of 
prime imjjortance. 
“ Ann. Mus. Civ. Stor. Nat. Genova, xxxiii, p. 195, (1893). 
“ Bollett. Mus. Zool. Anat. Comp. Torino, xv, no. 377, p. 8, (1900). 
