IV. NOTE ON SOME AMPHIBIOUS 

 COCKROACHES. 



By R. Shelford, M.A., F.L.S. 



Early in 1908^ Dr. Nelson Annandale forwarded to me a tube 

 of spirit containing four examples of cockroaches which he had 

 found in a jungle stream in the Dawna Hills of Lower Burma and 

 asked me to report on them. Three of the specimens are larval forms 

 of a species of Epilampra , and the fourth is an adult winged male, 

 also of the genus Epilampra and apparently new to science. Dr. 

 Annandale, in a letter to me on the subject of these cockroaches, 

 writes : — '' The wingless specimens were under stones in a small 

 jungle stream and behaved just as the one I obtained in Chota 

 Nagpur did.' The winged specimen was under a stone at the 

 edge of the stream, but swam readily when pursued. It did not 

 seem so much at home in the water, however, and apparently 

 could not, owing to its wings, raise the tip of its abdomen above 

 the surface." The wingless specimens are male larvae, and exhibit 

 the same modifications for an amphibious life as I have described 

 them in very similar larvae from Borneo * ; that is to say, the 

 terminal abdominal spiracles are situated at the base of two tubes 

 projecting from below the seventh abdominal tergites. I have 

 nothing further to add to that account beyond stating that the 

 genus Rhicnoda can be distinguished from Epilampra by the forward 

 production of the pronotum which completely covers the head, 

 whereas in Epilampra the vertex of the head is exposed ; adult 

 males of Rhicnoda have not yet been recognised with certaint}'. 

 It is quite evident that some species of Epilampra are amphibious 

 in their early stages and probably all the species of Rhicnoda are 

 amphibious throughout the whole of their life. At first I was 

 inclined to believe that the larvae sent me by Dr. Annandale were 

 the 3'oung stages of the adult male, in spite of the different shape 

 of the pronotum and the greater breadth of the abdomen in the 

 larvae, for we know that the larvae of the species of Gyna, an Afri- 

 can genus of cockroaches, differ from their adults just in these 

 very characters. But after a careful examination I have come to 

 the conclusion that Dr. Annandale's specimens constitute two 

 distinct species. Mr. J. Mangan, in a paper " On the mouth-parts 

 of some Blattidse," ^ has described some peculiar processes that 

 occur on the inner edge of the lacinia of the maxilla. These 

 processes sometimes afford valuable characters for discriminating 



1 /. Asiat. Soc. Bengal (N. S.), ii, pp. 105-106 (1906). 



2 Zoologist, June 1907. 



•^ Proc. R. Irish. Acad., xxvii, Sect. B, No. i (1908). 



