1S6 [August, 



In dealing- with the fonns of Crocotheiitis, an explanation of 

 indefinite conchi.sions regarding them is sometimes ascribed to inadequacy 

 of material. As, however, these insects usually bulk rather largely in 

 collections sent home, it is not, as a rule, dearth of quantity from which 

 difficulties arise, but rather from the want of exactly parallel series in 

 respect of age and quality of preservation. Further, no satisfactory 

 data are available with regard to size so far as this may be the result of 

 seasonal variation in the case of forms having two broods or having a 

 succession of emergences. Again, nothing is known, or appears to have 

 been written on the subject of variation in colour in connection with the 

 different terrestrial conditions in which the imagines live, e.g., whether 

 the duller reds in certain surroundings never become scarlet, or whether 

 the pale interalar and shoulder-stripes, which are usually evanescent, may 

 not in certain circumstances persist practically throughout life, as seems 

 not improbable. 



The present collection is of im]X)rtanee inasmuch as it contains 

 examples of the genus taken in nine different months of the year. The 

 hiatus between June 29th and August 17th is unfortunate but intelligible, 

 Caj^tain Evans reporting a shade temperature of 115° F. on July 2nd, 

 rising to 119° more than once during that month, and on August 8th 

 that it was still too hot during the day for collecting. 



12. — Crocothemis erijtliraea Brulle. 



2 2 2, March 23rd and May 15th; 1 <S , April 28th, 1918, all 

 at Amara by Captain Evans. It may have been the same species to 

 which he refers in a note : " I saw yesterday, 21st April, a single 

 Grocotliemis, by the river downstream, which was of a beautiful crimson 

 colour. I could not obtain it however." 



Without any previous knowledge of these insects, Captain Evans 

 seems at once to have detected the difference between this and the other 

 commoner form. He reports regarding the 6 : " Captured while 

 resting on a twig overhanging a rough well or pool in a palm garden by 

 the Masharra Canal. In colour the specimen was redder than any 

 others seen, and differs from other males in the following points : The 

 eyes were blue in the outer third of their surface, merging through purple 

 into the dark red of the remainder. No shoulder-stripe. The wmgs 

 without coloration at the tip, the venation of which is opener, slightly, 

 than in other specimens examined ; pterostigma shorter.'" 



Of small size : Hind wing, c? 2 > 26 mm. ; length of abdomen, S . 

 23| mm. ; $ , 22 mm. ; anq. fore wing, 8^ ; part of discoidal field with 



