190 THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S RECORD. 
visitor here as he is in the Caucasus; I saw the first one on April 8th. 
A very welcome arrival was the beautiful bee-eater Merops apiaster, L., 
which was seen in numbers on April 19th; this exquisite creature is 
very tame; he hawks up and down the little gullies and ravines, flash- 
ing and disappearing in the brilliant sunlight, uttering a whippling 
chirrup, and occasionally showing himself off to advantage by sitting 
on a projecting twig, or on top of a shrub, or telephone pole, surveying 
the country round, and sometimes diving at a passing dragonfly or 
other passing insect. The blatant roller, Coracias garrulus, turned up 
about the same time, but frequents the more wooded districts, and is 
seldom seen on the treeless plain of Lembet. The bee-eater and roller 
attracted general attention at once by their brilliant coloration ; the 
former is usually called a “kingfisher,” and the latter a ‘‘jay”’ or a 
“ parrot.” 
Towards the end of May, Orthoptera became more noticeable; 
Stauroderus bicolor, Charp., and Omocestus rufipes, Zett., are very com- 
mon, and numerous other species were abundant in the earlier stages ; 
young specimens of Saya, various Decticids are seen, and tantalise. 
On the tall, terribly spiny, purple-flowered thistles which grow cow- 
monly on the plain, a number of beetles and Rhynchota collect; a 
pretty little Hololampra is common on it, a little black fellow, with 
pronotum and elytra bordered with white; I think it is A. marginata, 
Schreb. The only other Blattid which I have come across is Lobop- 
tera decipiens, of which I have taken a few immature specimens under 
stones. While rummaging among some refuse my fingers came into 
contact with something round and hard; it was a shrapnel bullet, a 
touch of local colour that added an interest to collecting. 
[ was camped for several weeks on the top of some gently rising 
ground, with dry stony soil, and no vegetation but some spare scraggy 
grass, a few thistles, and some succory. This slope abounded in 
Orthoptera. On May 27th I took a Celes variabilis; as its name 
implies, this species is of inconstant colouring, and there are races 
with the wings white, blue-green, and deep red; it is the latter race 
which occurs here, and a very handsome fellow it is, as the general 
colour is deep black, that is,in the male; the female is mottled with 
grey on a dark ground; both are conspicuous, the dark colour showing 
up distinctly when they are settled on the sparsely covered ground, and 
the red flash of their wings attracting attention to them directly they 
make a short flight; I noticed the same thing on the steppes of Boz, 
in the Transcaucasus, last summer, where the same race occurs. As 
soon as June was well in Celes appeared in numbers, as did Docio- 
staurus brevicollis, Eversm., a common but pretty little grasshopper 
occurring in numbers on dry waste land practically throughout the 
Mediterranean province. 
But the most persistent and noticeable Orthopteron on this dry 
ground is a brachypterous Decticid, with decurved ovipositor, referable, 
I think, to Gampsocleis, which I shall call him until I get him identi- 
fied; the immature specimens were all green, but adults, appearing 
first early in June, are mottled brown; a good proportion retain a dark 
green background for a day or two after the final change of skin, and 
perhaps a few may do so permanently, but in the vast majority of cases 
the green background turns into a deep brown or rich maroon. They 
are extremely active and fierce; when captured they bite savagely, but 
