FURTHER NOTES FROM PALESTINE. 131 
observations up to the close of the campaign in Palestine and Syria. 
In addition, I have incorporated a good many general remarks which 
I trust will prove of sufficient interest to warrant their intrusion in a 
scientific periodical. The opening paragraph of the former notes 
pointing out their necessarily indeterminate character may be taken to 
apply equally to these, as although I had some apparatus sent out 
from England it arrived too late in the season of 1918 to be of much 
use and during the active military operations in the latter part of the 
year had to be ‘‘dumped”’ with all other baggage. I have had the 
advantage, however, of access to the collections in the Entomological 
Section of the Ministry of Agriculture in’ Cairo, and have to thank 
Mr. G. Storey and Mr. HE. W. Adair of that Department for their 
kindness and courtesy to a mere ‘‘other rank” in helping him to 
identify several of the more common insects referred to in the course 
of this article. 
During the summer of 1917 my unit remained in Lower Palestine 
facing the Turkish lines below Gaza with but little doing beyond the 
daily shelling and occasional raids on our part. Hverything was very 
dried up, and except for grass-hoppers, ants and house-flies, insect life 
was scarce. In August the camp was moved down to some fig-groves 
on the coast, the fig-trees growing out of the bare sand. Here I 
noticed a few Pierids and a fair-sized sand-wasp with a grey black- 
marked abdomen and lemon-coloured legs and mandibles, a silvery 
sand-frequenting species of ant, and among the Diptera a small 
Trypetid (? a Carphotricha) which was abundant, a Chrysophilus (2) 
and an Asilid (Philonicus?). On our return to the downs inland I 
was laid up with a bout of fever and sent down the line to Cairo. 
Here in a small garden attached to the barracks at Abbassia I noted in 
Diptera a species of Siccus, Catacomba pyrastri, a Syrphus and an 
Eristalis; a small skipper butterfly was not uncommon, and the 
common Hastern hornet (Vespa orientalis) was abundant round about 
the refuse tubs. I rejoined my battery in October and remained until 
the end of the month when I had ten days leave which I spent in a 
hasty visit to Luxor. I spent all my available time visiting the 
marvellous ruins, but noticed one or two specimens of Danaida 
chrysippus, a very handsome dragon-fly with a deep red body and 
wings, a number of webs of some gregarious caterpillar on the mimosa 
trees, and also a large number of spiders’ webs on some telegraph 
wires! On my return from leave I was detailed to take over the 
charge of a baggage dump at Belah, some eight miles south of Gaza, 
where I spent a somewhat monotonous time until the beginning of 
- February. There was not much vegetation and insects were scarce. 
At times it was even difficult to find house-flies in sufficient numbers 
to feed the chameleons which were kept as pets in many of the tents. 
Towards the end of January scarlet anemones and a pretty little iris 
appeared in flower, and I noticed some humble-bees, a small Syrphid 
fly and odd specimens of Pyrameis cardui. 
At the beginning of February I left Beleh and rejoined my battery 
at Mulebbis, a good. sized village situated some six miles inland and the 
* samme distance north-east of Jatta, and I remained there until mid-July. 
Mulebbis is one of the oldest Jewish colonies in Palestine, having been 
founded in 1878, and is surrounded with extensive orange groves and 
orchards, interspaced with well grown belts of eucalyptus planted for 
