96 THE entomologist's eecoed. 



momentary rest, and they soon disappeared among the upper foliage. 

 Compared with such an insect, the most gorgeous butterflies of the tropics 

 seem tawdry and commonplace. 2Iacroxiph us snmatramis, Haar, a locust 

 with which one sometimes meets in the Malay jungle, is hardly less bril- 

 liantly coloured, if it is considerably smaller, for its tegmina are black, 

 spotted with gold, its head of the clearest scarlet, its femora black, and 

 its tibife white. The beauty of such specimens soon fades, however they 

 may be preserved ; in spirit or formaline it vanishes entirely. A much 

 commoner species than either of these is Mecopoda elomjata, which the 

 Malays call the Deer Grasshopper, because of the splendid way in 

 which it leaps along among the bashes at the edge of the jungle. Its 

 colour varieties are almost as numerous as those of the eggs of the 

 guillemot. Some specimens are green, others are brown ; some are 

 all of one shade, others are marked with spots and patches that look 

 as if they had been laid on Avith a brush, and the extreme varieties, 

 green and brown, are found together, sometimes both on one bush. 

 The two tegmina of a single specimen often do not exactly correspond 

 with one another in their markings. For some good reason, the Malays 

 compare the harsh and grating stridulation of this species to the 

 crowing of a cock. They keep it alive in cages, feeding it on the young 

 shoots of the pine-apple plant, in order to listen to its song. To a 

 European ear the sound is as unbeautiful as Chinese music, and it is 

 not made more melodious by the fact that it only commences at the 

 dead of night. A most remarkable form is not uncommon, 

 Avhich, coloured in neutral shades of green and brown, has the power 

 of erecting a scarlet bladder between the head and the thorax, if it be 

 roughly handled. I have already referred to the Stenopdwatidae of 

 the Jalor caves. Specimens of the cave species are only found in absolute 

 darkness, and, though they have eyes well supplied with pigment, are 

 probably blind. The further that one penetrates into the caves the 

 more numerous do individuals of this Locustid become, until, at half 

 a mile from the entrance, the ground is alive with them, jumping like 

 sand-hoppers on the sea-shore, and the walls covered wherever there 

 is any kind of recess. They do not appear to sit on a rock which is 

 quite straight and vertical, but prefer to shelter under a overhanging 

 ledge, probably because water is continually dripping from the roof in 

 many parts of the cave. Several other species belonging to this 

 interesting family are found in Lower Siam, under the bark of dead 

 trees and in the deserted galleries left by termites in wood. A curious 

 point with regard to the structure of the cave form is that one antenna, 

 usually the right one, is very considerably longer, and quite perceptibly 

 stouter than the other. This asymmetry is probably correlated with a 

 certain difference of function between the two. While the insect is 

 resting, there is certainly a tendency for the shorter antenna to be 

 held bent over the back Avhile the longer one is moved round through 

 the greater part of a circle. I was unable to detect anything else in 

 the position which the Stenopelmatid assumed in the caves, which tended 

 to throw light upon this curious phenomenon. The asymmetry is 

 even more noticeable in a single specimen of a considerably larger 

 species which I found in a dead tree in the jungle. 



I have left myself no room to speak about the Mantodia and the 

 Phaamodea, which are in some ways the most interesting groups of the 

 Orthoptera, but perhaps this is just as well, for they need a far more 



