TWO NEW SPECIES OF PHYLLOMORPHINjE. 



89 



The old Swedish traveller in South Africa, Dr. Sparrman, 

 who first discovered (1775) the curious Pepliricus paradoxus, was 

 impressed by its mimetic resemblance to a leaf. He narrates : — 

 " At noontide I sought for shelter among the branches of a 

 shrub from the intolerable heat of the sun. Though the air 

 was now extremely still and calm, so as hardly to have shaken 

 an aspen leaf, yet I thought I saw a little withered, pale, 

 crumpled leaf, eaten as it were by caterpillars, fluttering from 

 the tree. This appeared to me so very extraordinary, that I 

 thought it worth my while suddenly to quit my verdant bower in 

 order to contemplate it ; and I could scarcely believe my eyes 

 when I saw a live insect, in shape and colour resembling the 

 fragment of a withered leaf, with the edges turned up and eaten 

 away as it were by caterpillars, and at the same time all beset 

 with prickles. Nature, by this peculiar form, has certainly 

 extremely well defended and concealed, as it were in a mask, 

 this insect from birds and its other diminutive foes."* 



We know most about the European species. Phyllomorpha 

 laciniata has been well observed. Bolivar has described its 

 stridulation and mode of carrying eggs ; t and Giard has also 

 written on its habits. I 



Pephricus frag His, sp. n. 



Varying in colour from 

 pale creamy white to ochra- 

 ceous ; pronotum with the 

 base slightly concave, the 

 lateral lobes broadly gibbous 

 anteriorly, their apices some- 

 what obliquely truncate, the 

 abdominal lobes broad with 

 their apices truncate, a more 

 or less distinct transverse 

 fuscous fascia crossing abdo- 

 men beyond middle and ex- 

 tending through the fourth 

 and longest lobe ; the upper 

 surface varies in the number 

 and position of some scattered 

 small fuscous spots. 



Long. (? and $ 12 millim. 



Hab. West Africa; N. Nigeria (G. Migeod— Brit. Mus.) ; 

 Abyssinia (Brit. Mus.). 



Allied to P. pellicula, Westw., but differing by the broader 

 anterior angles of the pronotal lobes, &c. 



p. fragilis, Dist. 



:;: ' Voyage to Cape of Good Hope,' Engl, transl. 2nd edit., vol. ii. p. 

 I Feuille Natural., xxiv. pp. 43-4 (1894). 

 ; Bull. Soc. Ent. Fr. p. Ixxix. (1895). 



16. 



