86 



THE ENTOMOLOGIST S RECORD. 



This truly remarkable insect is large and stout. It is black all over 

 and highly polished, with some red prominences on the thorax. The 

 species has lost the power of jumping, and the hindlegs are barely 

 stronger than the forelegs— a most unusual state of affairs in the 

 Locustulae. The insect is apparently protected by an orange oily* 

 fluid which, I think, comes from the mouth. I could detect no smell 

 at all in this fluid, but had not the courage to taste it. The Mediter- 

 ranean Acridians Stanrodenis bicolor, Pyn/uiiiorpha grijlluules and 

 Acridiuni aegyptium were taken. The first is not generally green at 

 El Kantara, most individuals being pale straw-colour, exactly the 

 colour of the barley stems among which the species was taken. The 

 Orthoptera more than any other group were coloured to match the 

 desert. This applies to such species as Eremobia pulchripennis, Serv. 

 (?), Pauiphai/us hespericiis, Thalpomena algeriana, Luc, Caloptenii& 

 seraphis, Serv. and Eremocharis insicpiis, Luc. (taken at Biskra by 

 Prof. Walter Garstang). I should like to record here a few notes 

 on the above species. Nymphs of Eremobia sp. were extremely 

 numerous. They are quite invisible when at rest, as they are 

 cryptically coloured, except for black, red and orange marks on the 

 inside of the hind-femora. The hindlegs are tightly adpressed to 

 the abdomen, the tarsi placed under the body, the anterior and 

 middle legs are also placed under the body. I strongly suspect that 

 the antennae are folded vertically downwards when the insect is really 

 resting. It is, however, quite impossible to see the insect till it has 

 moved, and then it is awake and carries its antennae porrected, though 

 the legs are in the position which 1 have described above. Nymphs 

 were very numerous all over the stony country. A few of the crimson 

 winged adults were taken at the end of my visit. It is most startling 

 and unnerving to see one of these very large insects rise suddenly at 

 your feet, out of nowhere, fly rapidly away with a whirring zig-zag 

 flight, and mstantly disappear on again reaching the earth. The 

 cryptic colouration is, as I have said, perfect. I suggest that the 

 crimson wings and brightly coloured legs act as a flash colour. By 

 this I mean that the insect perhaps frightens an enemy when it rises 

 suddenly ; more than that, it is certainly most diflicult to the eye to 

 follow a gigantic crimson insect, which quite suddenly becomes 

 invisible. I assure the reader that this sudden disappearance renders 

 it extremely difficult to mark the exact spot where the insect has 

 disappeared. Of the habits of the wingless and clumsy Paiiipha(/iis 

 hespericm a good deal might be written. The ? s are desert-coloured 

 and live among the stones. The males are browner, and generally are 

 irregularly marked with a particular shade of lavender grey. They 

 thus resemble very closely the stems of a Zizijphiis bush. It cannot be 

 due to accident that, three times in one day, a male took refuge in the 

 nearest tuft of Zizyphns, when I was pursuing him. I never observed 

 one of the clay-coloured females take one of these directed leaps into a 

 bush. At El Kantara I took a single very large Caloptenns, probably 

 an undescribed species. Of the other Orthopteran families I took the- 

 cockroach EctobUi perspiclllaris (nymph) and the earwig horjicula 



* I am aware that many grasshoppers and locusts secrete such a fluid on 

 being captured. The fluid secreted by Eugaster is five times more abundant than 

 that of an ordinary insect. 



