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FIELD NOTES FROM SALONIKA. I. 189 
Field Notes from Salonika. I. 
By Caprain M. BURR, D.Sc., F.E.S. 
It is extremely tantalising to be surrounded by interesting things 
without the means of identifying them. The scrubby hills and baking 
plains of Macedonia are practically virgin soil for entomologists, full of 
things worth collecting and observing, but both collecting and observ- 
ing must be done at odd moments, when opportunity arises, not always 
in selected spots, and with improvised material. Salonika apes the 
towns of Hurope, but, it is hardly necessary to say, there is neither 
library nor collection for reference, and one is thrown back upon a 
frail memory to recognise one’s captures. Consequently notes from the 
field are untrustworthy, determinations are likely to err, many nice 
things cannot be identified at all, and points of interest in distribution 
and variation may be entirely overlooked. Still, notes direct from the 
field have the advantage of a freshness and directness that is lacking 
in the dry accounts written up in the study, often months afterwards, 
when impressions have faded, for not every observation is noted down, 
and often enough what passes for a great event to-day is forgotten for 
ever to-morrow. 
So perhaps it is worth while putting on record a few notes on col- 
lecting in the neighbourhood of Salonika, with the reservation that all 
identifications are provisional, and subject to correction at a later date. 
The first Orthoptera noted were the few common things that hiber- 
nate and appear in the early warm days of spring. As early as January 
9th an oceasional Hpacromia strepens was seen taking advantage of those 
brilliant sunny days with which we were favoured in that month; on 
January 31st I saw a minute grasshopper, apparently a Stenobothrus, 
evidently just hatched. dAecridimn aegyptiun, L., was fairly common 
in April; the first specimen was brought me on the 4th. About the 
same date Pte. Barraud sent me Acrotylus patruelis, Sturm., Platyphyma 
giornae, several minute Decticids and Phaneropterids just hatched, and 
a Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa, L. The latter is common enough, and was 
often found when dug-outs were being made. In April and May, on 
the Lembet plain and slopes of the adjoining hills, where there was 
practically no vegetation, a small cricket used to strike up about sun- 
set; time after time I tried to stalk him down, but he was so timid, 
and the twilight so short, that my patience was never rewarded even 
by a glimpse of the creature ; it was a peculiarly musical chirrup, and 
on listening attentively and at close quarters, it was just possible to 
detect the faint sound of a deeper note at the beginning of each song; 
from the type of stridulation, and the nature of the habitat, I think it 
must have been a Gryllodes. Three day’s violent rain at the end of 
April must have drowned out all these little dwellers in dug-outs, for 
after that we never heard their cheerful piping again. 
The end of March was marked by the arrival of the first swallows 
(March 31st) ; storks were reported as early as the 14th of the month; 
there is a pair nesting in some tall trees at the back of the Turkish 
cemetery just outside that part of the Henatian Way, which is known 
to the lorry-drivers as ‘‘ Piccadilly Circus,” and they are a familiar 
sight to those who go into town. The Hgyptian vulture, Neophron 
percnopterus, which looks very like a stork on the wing, is a spring 
SEPTEMBER 1d5ru, 1916. 
