80 COCKROACHES. 
astonished to find they were still alive, and coming out of the crevices 
of the table and in the drawers. As an experiment, I got some strong 
ammonia and poured in the drawers, and painted round the table with 
it. In a few hours I opened the drawers, and found several dozens 
laid on their backs quite dead. But it is very difficult to use this 
where food is always about, and servants are not to be trusted.” 
Of the good supply of very characteristic specimens sent me, 
almost all were fully developed, only a very few being in larval or 
wingless state. 
The general colour is light or yellowish brown, with two brown 
longitudinal stripes running along the upper part of the fore body ; 
head bent down, yellowish above; horns (antenne) long and slender. 
Wings four; the upper pair (or wing-cases) narrow, and lapping over 
when in repose, gaping apart at the tip, and longer than the abdomen, 
the texture like thin parchment, the colour yellowish; the true wings 
folded lengthwise beneath them, and nearly as long, more transparent. 
Legs ochrey.* 
The larva (that is, the early stage before any appearance either of 
wings or wing-cases) brownish, with yellowish stripe down the middle 
of the fore body and also along each edge, thus being darker in general 
appearance than the perfect imsect, in which the brown colour (see 
figure, p. 28) only shows as two stripes; also there was a narrow 
yellowish edge to the abdomen. 
The egg-case was, as usual with Cockroaches, a kind of horny sac, 
which is so gradually forced out with its contained eggs by the mother 
insect, that it may be carried about (as with our Common Cockroach) 
for several days before deposit. The figure 4, p. 28, shows the shape 
of this ege-capsule, which is somewhat squarer at the ends than that 
of the Common Cockroach, and under a fairly strong magnifier shows 
as definitely, transversely striated; and along one side runs a raised 
ridge, minutely toothed, or rather, in this species, beaded, which opens 
longitudinally, thus forming the two edges of a long slit, through 
which presently the young Cockroaches, after hatching from the eggs 
contained in the case, push their way out. 
In regard to localities and nature of food. The presence of these 
pests is not limited to indoor shelters, for Dr. Taschenberg notes them 
as having been found repeatedly in German woods; also that he has 
himself captured them in the woods near Halle, and he was aware 
likewise of their having been taken in woods near Leipzig.t Indoors, 
* For technical description of characteristics of the family of Phyllodromide, 
also genus Phyllodromia, and species Germanica, the reader is referred to the 
‘Blattarie of Australia and Polynesia,’ by G. O. Tepper, F.L.8. (separate issue 
from Trans. of Royal Soc. of South Australia), pp. 35 and 41. 
t See ‘Praktische Insekten Kunde,’ by Dr. E. L. Taschenberg, pt. iv. p. 210. 
