FIELD NOTES FROM SALONIKA. II. 258 
in by friends, who would hardly believe that they were insects, much 
less grasshoppers. They seemed to live in little colonies, and to stay 
in one place, even on one shrub, unless disturbed, when they scuttle oft 
pretty quickly. Our old friend was taking a constitutional one after- 
noon, under observation; he was quietly nibbling a bit of green stuff 
that was not yet quite dried up by the southern sun, when he caught 
sight of the cold eye of a Saga fixedly staring at him; he turned at 
once and scuttled off at a fine pace, in spite of his embonpoint, and 
nothing would induce him to come back to that shrub. 
One evening there was a gale; the Vardar was blowing, the Tra- 
montana of this district, the wind that brings those terrible blizzards 
in winter, like the one that caused our troops so much suffering in 
S€rbia at the end of November, which seemed more penetrating than 
the sleigh drive at Tornea the previous January, with the thermometer 
touching 30° Reaumur, although the temperature was not nearly so low. 
The creature’s cage, which was left in the open because he was too 
voluable at night to be a good tent-fellow, was blown over and carried 
a considerable distance, while the lid was picked up some several hun- 
dred yards away; of our pet there was no sign, and he was reluctantly 
entered as “‘ missing.” But to our astonished delight next evening we 
heard a familiar voice, and found a bedrageled, dissipated, and very 
dusty Dinarchus, sitting outside the mosquito-door of the mess-tent, 
plaintively chirping for admittance. This mark of faithfulness and 
affection endeared him more than ever to the mess, and there was 
genuine regret when he was found dead in his cage one morning; he 
had lived a little over a month in captivity, but his declining days must 
have been painful, for his end was no doubt hastened by a swarm of 
ants, which chewed off his tarsi and his antenne. After this mis- 
fortune he became very depressed and lethargic, and his end was no 
doubt a happy release. 
The tall thistle on which the first found Dinarchus was discovered 
is an early species, and was shrivelled and dried up by the middle of 
June. We found a colony of Dinarchus on a low shrub on Lembet 
plain, but all were males. Their voice is penetrating and carries to a 
considerable distance, and these big, black, sluggish creatures, that 
hardly look like insects, are visible a long way in the scanty herbage, 
so it would appear that they have few enemies. Yet they would afford 
a luscious morsel to birds that like a rich diet, of which there are 
plenty in Macedonia. Perhaps the apparently inoffensive yellow fluid 
referred to in the previous note is sufficient protection. They never 
ejected it in captivity when gently handled. When opening their 
portly abdomens for stuffing, I found that some specimens were dry 
inside, but others had an ample supply of fluid, apparently free inside 
the exoskeleton; and there was a bladder of a thick greenish-brown 
juice, which was perhaps the mother-liquor. 
The other most interesting creature kept alive was a big female 
Saga, referred to in the previous note. She was a handsome creature, 
marbled with white, brown, and green, but one can hardly get attached 
to these fierce carnivores, as one can to a gentle but corpulent Dinar- 
chus. ‘This specimen had the ovipositor malformed, probably due to 
an accident in early youth. Instead of the typical powerful scimitar- 
like weapon, the upper valves were reduced to mere stumpy cones, and 
the lower valves were malformed, weak, and short. This deformity 
