ORTHOPTERA IX EAST KENT IN 1907. 253 



the male. In the same way, the female of L. uiridissima is usually a 

 chance find, while the male betrays his presence by his song. I have 

 heard him in many nettle-beds by the roadsides near here, at Fredville, 

 Barfreston, Wingham, Kearsney and Alkham. 



I took no great rarities at the Warren, but was exceedingly lucky 

 in another locality, which, I believe, has not hitherto been worked. 

 That is Stonehall, a farm near Lydden, occupying a little flat ground 

 in the valley of the Dour, and the precipitous hillsides which bound it. 



When walking over these steep grassy slopes, gun in hand, after 

 partridges, on September 21st, my attention was attracted by the buzz 

 of innumerable grasshoppers rejoicing in the noonday heat. I 

 recognised the voice of the universal Stauroderus bicolor, ('harp., and 

 ( 'horthippus parallelus, Zett., as well as the prolonged whirr of 

 Omocestus viridus, Linn. In addition to these, there was Stenobothrus 

 lineatus, Panz., a new locality for this interesting and handsome 

 species, and another chirp unfamiliar to me. A vague hope which 

 arose within me was quickly realised by the view of a fine green male 

 of Decticus verrucivorus, Linn., stridulating merrily on a bit of bright 

 green grass. This discovery is very satisfactory, as this fine insect 

 has been taken only singly at St. Margaret's Bay, since the days when 

 Curtis and Bingley found it near Christchurch. At Stonehall there 

 i> a colony which frequents the steep rough sides of a deep coombe in 

 the chalkhills. These slopes are so precipitous that it does not pay 

 to cultivate the poor chalky ground, and so they are, perhaps, virgin soil, 

 where the autochthonous fauna (and I daresay the flora too) of this part 

 of the county has found an asylum from the universal agriculture which 

 has seized upon every available scrap of land in the neighbourhood. 



I returned to Stonehall a day or two later, and took four or five 

 more males, all green, but found no females. In vain I lay silently 

 on the grass basking in the sun, smoking a pipe, waiting to see a 

 female attracted to a male by his persistent love-song. I smoked four 

 pipes, but found no females. 



It is a fine handsome species ; its oily-green colour and the terrific 

 leaps which it is enabled to make with its enormously long hindlegs, 

 give it a striking likeness to a frog as it springs through the grass. 

 On several other sunny days I found it there, but could never take a 

 female, though males were always chirping when the sun shone. But 

 I had not exhausted my luck; on the afternoon of September 24th I 

 went there again. It was, however, too late in the day and grass- 

 hoppers were not in evidence, so 1 swept some nettles in the old farm- 

 yard, in the hope of turning up Forficula lesnei. The first stroke of 

 the net revealed Apterygida albipennis, Meg. ; I took over two dozen of 

 them before I had done; females greatly out-numbered the males, and 

 it is curious that although nettle-beds were numerous, it was only in 

 one patch that this earwig was taken. 



The value of this find is hardly lessened by Mr. Chitty's re-discovery 

 of this species near Charing, in 1904. Probably it is widely distributed 

 not only in Kent, but in England; witness Mr. .hours Edwards' 

 capture in Norfolk several years ago. Persistent search will probably 

 reveal a number of new localities. 



Of other Orthoptera there is little to relate. Stenobothrus lineatus, 

 Panz., occurs at Golgotha, a clump of firs just outside Sibertswold. 

 Meconema varium, bain - ., strays occasionally into our house, and Lepto- 



