A FEW NOTES ON ORTHOPTERA IN CROATIA. 



27 



Every evening in the late summer, walking home from Zagreb 

 along the Pantovchak, a road on a hill covered with villas and vine- 

 yards, I was greeted with a chorus of Conocephalita mandibular is, 

 Charp., Phasifonura viridissima, L., Plwlidoptera (/riseoaptera, De G., 

 and Ephippigera vitiiim, Serv. The first has a strong and persistent 

 note, recalling that of Omoceatua, but with a distinctively loeustrine 

 timbre. I never heard it chirp before dusk : it sits in thick grass, in 

 hedges^, or vines : at the bottom of the garden there is a sluggish 

 brook, with rank and reedy herbage where this species is fairly 

 numerous, and this was the best place to catch it : I took one or two, 

 which seem slightly smaller than those which I have captured in 

 France and Spain. Its near relative, Xiphidium fascutn, Fabr., is 

 numerous in the same place, and its stridulation is similar but 

 proportionately weaker, and it requires patience to detect. This 

 species I have always associated with reedy places, edges of brooks, 

 etc., much as its northern brother A', dorsale, Latr., but its other 

 brother, A', hastatmn, Charp., with its extremely long ovipositor, I 

 found in Serbia among scrub on dry chalky hillsides. 



P., viridiaaiiiia, L., is persistent : it is noticeably more vigorous in 

 these southern latitudes than in England. I have noticed that 

 in the hot southern sun in the Transcaucasus in the afternoon it will 

 often take to wing, as though from sheer " joie de vivre," which I 

 have never known it do in England, where perhaps the sun is never 

 strong enough to tempt it to this feat ; with its long straggling legs, 

 and ovipositor, it has an odd appearance in flight. In southern 

 Europe, too, it is fond of climbing up trees to carry on its vespertine 

 concert, which I have never noticed in England ; even on the street- 

 side trees in the town and in gardens it is a usual occurrence to hear 

 his unmistakeable song on warm summer evenings and nights. I 

 have never noticed Conocephaliis niandihiilaris to do this in Europe, 

 though in Brazil I have heard members of this genus very persistently 

 stridulating at night in trees, as does P. viridissima down here. He was 

 common enough in trees, chiefly oak, in the artificial forests along the 

 valley of the Drave, near the village of Pitomacha: I heard both 

 these two species for the last time on October 15th, both on the 

 Pantovchak. 



Phnlidoptera griseoaptera behaves exactly as in England. On the 

 Pantovchak near Zagreb and near Pitomacha, one can always hear his 

 characteristic tss tss in the eveninofs, beginning just before dusk, and 

 carrying on till late at night. The latest date when I observed him 

 was October 16th, on the Pantovchak. 



Ephippigera vitinni, Serv., is an interesting species. This group is 

 extensively represented in northern Africa, especially in Algeria and 

 Morocco, bat is particularly developed in the Iberian Peninsula. Some 

 species extend tbrough France, one or two in Italy, and two reach the 

 coast of Daimatia. But this species ranges throughout central 

 Europe. It occurs, as a rarity, in Belgium, and I have found it 

 commonly in Normandy. Had it occurred in England, it is so 

 prominent and so strange a creature, that it could not have escaped 

 the attention of our British entomologists for so many years, so the 

 presumption is that it has extended its range northwards from the 

 distributing centre of the group, in south-western Europe, as far as 

 Belgium and Normandy after Britain was separated from the 



