igog.] Miscellanea. 293 



and nasuiiis are iticluded by Day in his lamta. This specimen of 

 McClelland' s was described under the name of Platycara nasuia and 

 incidentally has only six anal rays, the number which Day gives as 

 distinguishing his modestus from lamta and jerdoni, but which I 

 have alread}^ shown to be frequent in lamta (of Da}^). Evidently 

 Da}^ considers McClelland's D. nastitus to be really D. lamta with 

 the snout constricted, a secondary sexual modification. Conse- 

 quentl}^ the three Indian species of Discognathns according to 

 Giinther are included by Day in his lamta. Now Day gives for 

 lamta a ver}- wide distribution, for jerdoni and modestus on the 

 other hand a very limited one, namely, the Bhavani River at the 

 foot of the Nilgiris for the former and " probably Northern India " 

 for the latter. 



In conclusion there are no specimens of Discognathus in the 

 Indian Museum which justify me in considering that there is more 

 than one Indian species of this genus, but probably the exami- 

 nation of large numbers of specimens from different districts 

 might lead to the establishment of well-defined varieties. 



J. T. Jenkins. 



INSECTS. 

 Field Notes on Indian Insects : — 



1. The occurrence of the myrmecophilous cricket Myr- 

 mecophila quadrispina in India. — One evening in July, 1907, 1 noticed 

 a minute apterous cricket moving about on the top of a wall on the 

 outskirts of Calcutta, surrounded by ants. Although its posterior 

 femora were much thickened, it ran with great swiftness, much in 

 the same manner as an ant. Hav ng secured the cricket and some of 

 the ants, I sent them for identification to the late Colonel Bingham, 

 who returned them shortly before his lamented death, identifying 

 the ant as Iridomyrmex anceps, Roger, and sa^dng that Mr. Kirby 

 had compared the cricket with the t3^pe of Myrmecophila quadri- 

 spina, Perkins, and found that it agreed fairly well with that 

 species, with which he regarded it as specifically identical. The 

 cricket was originally described from Hawaii, into which the ant 

 has been introduced by man. 



2. Curious habit of an Indian Jassid. — Dr. D. Sharp, in 

 his account of the insects in the Cambridge Natural History (vol. vi, 

 p. 577), refers to the "phenomena known as weeping-trees," and 

 states that these phenomena are due to the activities of Homop- 

 terous insects of the famil}^ Cercopidge. In India, however, a 

 similar phenomenon is sometimes produced by a common Jassid 

 {Tetigoniella ferruginea, Fabr.), although it is not alwaj's easy to 

 trace it to its proper source. While collecting insects on Paresnath 

 Hill in Western Bengal last April, I was surprised on more than one 

 occasion to feel what I thought to be rain dripping from a clear 

 sky through the foliage of the trees, until a careful search revealed 



