OKTHOPTERA IN 1905 AND 1906. 53 



peculiar little Tettix bipunctatus was met with .at Horsley on 

 May 27th, and at Bookham Common on May 31st ; while Colonel 

 Yerbury gave me Scotch specimens taken at Nairn on May 18th 

 and June 6th, at Brodie on June 5th, and at Nethy Bridge on 

 June 15th. 



Of the long-horned grasshoppers (Locustids), I have records 

 of but three species. Mr. B. G. Cooper gave me a female speci- 

 men of Locusta viridissima, which he took on the downs near 

 Swanage, well " protected " on a furze-bush. Mr. H. M. Edel- 

 sten sent me specimens of Platycleis grisea, taken at Dartmouth 

 at sugar, which they were eating. He says " one female was 

 laying eggs in one of the posts ; it had its ovipositor thrust 

 deeply into a chink in the wood. What curious black cigar- 

 shaped things the eggs are ! One female had the top of its 

 head and the plate on the thorax quite red. Females were more 

 plentiful than males." Two females of P. brachyptera were taken 

 near Oxshott on September 30th, and kept in captivity. About 

 a week later one partly devoured the other. Whether the victim 

 became moribund, or whether it was forcibly overcome by the 

 other, I cannot say ; but, as was clear from movements of its 

 jaws, it was not lifeless while the other was feeding upon it. 

 Grass had been supplied to them, but I cannot say that they fed 

 on it, and it soon got dry each time. L. viridissima has been 

 credited with similar tendencies, and possibly few of our Ortho- 

 ptera are entirely without carnivorous, if not cannibalistic, 

 habits. 



1906. On January 14th, in a damp rotting tree-stump on 

 Esher Common, a male Forficula auricularia was found hyber- 

 nating, thus confirming my observation of the hybernation of 

 this sex in 1905. On January 28th — also on Esher Common — I 

 found beneath some Scotch firs, about two or three inches under 

 ground, a female of this species, with her eggs, near the rhizome 

 of a bracken-fern. They were placed in a glass-topped box with 

 a little moss and soil. Later, the mother was seen carefully 

 hunting over the soil, and, on finding an egg, picking it up and 

 carrying it away in her jaws to the shelter of the moss out of 

 sight. On January 31st there was a little heap of sixteen eggs. 

 Though they are fairly large, this seems a small number ; but 

 perhaps some were lost when I inadvertently brought them to 

 light in the woods. The egg is just over a millimeter long, and 

 just under one broad ; it is yellowish in colour, with perhaps a 

 faint tinge of green, and appears to have no markings. On 

 February 2nd, and on the morning of February 3rd, the mother 

 was apparently " brooding over her eggs," but after that they 

 seemed to be scattered and neglected. On February 7th they 

 were in the same state, and on examination with a lens I found 

 several, at least, were bent in on one side ; I concluded that they 

 were dead, and that the mother knew the fact. This date 



