191&.] 



195 



colour. May be found by the water-side, but prefers open lickls and 

 drier places. Sexes equally abundant." 



24.ix.18 : A few remarks on the numbers of SelysiotTiemis nigra 

 seen by me on September 17th on the desert land about four miles down 

 the railway from Amara may be of sufficient interest to warrant my 

 detailing them. The ground for miles at the locality in question, Avhich 

 is some distance from the river, is perfectly flat, baked hard by the sun, 

 and quite uncultivated but traversed by numerous deep irrigation- 

 channels with steep sides about four feet deep, along the margins of 

 which large ridges are formed by the excavated mud. At present these 

 channels, which run at right angles to the river at intervals of from 

 100 to 400 yards, are quite dry ; they, carry water earlier in the year to 

 the barley-growing land some distance farther from the river. The 

 parched ground is here sparsely clad with desert vegetation — an annual 

 and a perennial Suaeda, a very mealy dry Airlplex, a few stunted 

 Tamarisks along the channel margins, and a Snlsola ; with a fair 

 amount of acacia scrub and camel thorn, are all there is for miles. 

 The ground has no crust of salt showing on the surface, nor is there 

 any seen on the dry Avails of the channels. I observed great numbers 

 of the Selysiothemis all along the railway, on the embankment of wliich 

 I was somewhat precariously motor-cycling. I therefore halted, and 

 from where I was, endeavoured to estimate their numbers. I noted that 

 the dragon-flies were resting on the telegraph-wires, as a flight of birds 

 often does, sunning themselves with raised abdomens as is their wont. 

 It was very difficult to count tliem against the glaring sky, but I easily 

 made out thirty-six on one wire between one post and the next — there 

 were almost certainly more. For the sake of my ej^es I merely glanced 

 at the three remaining wires to assure myself that there Avere about an 

 equal number on these also ; and at adjoining lengths of Avire, Avith the 

 same result. It is therefore certain that at least 140 of these insects 

 (I saAv no other kind) Avere ])erched between each telegraph-post and the 

 next for miles. In addition they were to be seen in numbers resting on 

 any tallish branch of the vegetation Avithin vicAv." 



This peculiar insect is, as Kis states (Coll. Selys, p. 1042), one of 

 the most remarkable objects of the European di-agon-fly fauna, llecorded 

 from southern Italy in 1825 and Catalonia in 1878, it remained unknoAvni 

 otherwise until Kis described a series from, Kashgar Darja in 1897. 

 Since then Bartenef has recorded it from Amti Darja, Turkestan, Bok- 

 hara, Persia, Afghanistan, the Caucasus; also Kis from the Algerian 

 Sahara; and more recently Campion ("Entomologist," vol. li, p. 128, 



