254 THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S RECORD. 
made her accouchement the more interesting. The event came off on 
the evening of July L7th, twenty-three days after her fertilisation ; she 
was very big, and towards the evening became very restless, hunting 
round for a suitable spot to bore a hole; but the metal floor of her 
cage was unyielding, so I put in a small box full of loose earth ; but 
her poor crippled ovipositor opened like a pair of scissors, and she 
could make no impression, for next morning I found eight long, flat, 
narrow, smooth, olive-brown eggs, about a quarter of an inch long, 
lying on the earth. On the 25th, after the same performance, she laid 
four more; at the moment of writing (August 8th) she is still big, and 
has just laid three more. Perhaps this delay in oviposition is due to 
the fact that she is living under highly artificial conditions, or it may 
be due to the inconvenience of the crippled ovipositor; but it maygbe 
a natural provision to prevent the eggs all being laid in one place, as a 
colonial or social existence is hardly suitable for such fierce and active 
carnivores. 
She sits all day on a sprig of succory and does not moye; matching 
wonderfully with the light and shade of the green twigs; her tarsi are 
dilated at the tips, and in spite of her weight she can cling to a pane 
of glass almost like a fly ; she paysa lot of attention to these pads, and 
frequently cleans them with her mouth. When let loose, she stands 
high on her legs, and moves slowly and deliberately, swaying her body 
to and fro, as a Mantis will do; perhaps this is an imitation of the 
swaying movement of the twigs on which the Sagas live, for like the 
Mantis, Saga is only a living trap or ambush; but when startled she 
can move rapidly enough, with a series of ungainly springs. She is a 
voracious feeder, rapidly devouring two fat females of Caloptenus 
italicus, but she is nervous, for directly a couple of these chubby but 
vigorous grasshoppers are put into her cage, and start banging their 
horny heads against the roof, she dashes clumsily about in a great state 
of alarm. I have not seen her catch her prey, but when she has caught 
it she grips it between her powerful and spiny forelegs, much as a 
Mantis does, and starts chewing methodically, beginning with the head, 
paying no attention to the grasshopper’s convulsive kicking, which only 
stops when the whole head is eaten away. Saga shears off the elytra 
and wings together, and the posterior femora, but a freshly emerged 
soft specimen seems to be a great dainty, for she chews them right 
down to the very end, like a piece of fresh green asparagus. 
Several specimens of both sexes of Saga have been taken round 
Lembet, but all plain green; it is not a big species, being in fact a 
little smaller than the usual south European S. serrata, and cannot 
compare in stature with the formidable monsters of Asia Minor. 
On the evening of July 26th, Captain Powell and I strolled over to 
the Lembet brook; a stiff breeze was blowing, as usual, but there was 
shelter in this secluded dell. Except a few shrubs and a few tall trees 
something like a maple, everything was burnt dry. We found Calop- 
tenus italicus as obtrusive and numerous as everywhere from the Caspian 
to Madeira, and its diminutive relative, Platyplyma giornae, was cGom- 
mon. ‘The Cidipodidae were represented by Ufdaleus niyrofasciatus, De 
Geer, which is common round here, and no less than three species of 
(Hdipoda, that is, O. caerulescens, Li., O. miniata, Pall., and O. salina, 
Hiversm. (= gratiosa, Serv.). This is the only place where I have 
found all these three species together, Decticus albifrons, Fabr., is 
