300 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



crank-like legs from thirty-five to forty times, it would cause a 

 bird-like warble to resound through my sleeping apartment at 

 the Villa Flora, where my relatives were staying, that resembled 

 the dirl of a circular saw, followed by scissor snippings ; and it 

 rang the changes rfight and day in defiant response to the noise 

 of the carpenter's plane, the hammering of the blacksmith, and 

 rumble of carriage wheels. It lived and merrily sang, making 

 its life an infancy, from June 18th until July 28th ; the females 

 I met with on the mountains in September. Stenobothrus 

 lineatus has elytra slashed with velvet green ; the discoidal or 

 central area in the male is glassy, with piano-string veins, and 

 at its extremity there is a dash resembling white paint ; the 

 female has the fore edge white. It may be found on the Surrey 

 chalk downs; I saw a male at Guildford on July 12th, 1881, and 

 about that date they may be heard sounding out their long-sus- 

 tained " tin-tin ! " both at Guildford and at Eeigate. On Aug. 6th, 

 1883, 1 discovered both sexes wandering among the escargots and 

 deadly nightshade at White Hill, further on. I then noticed 

 that when a male encountered a female it made a snapping 

 noise. The Omocestus viridulus, which may be recognized by the 

 brighter green splarge on its plain brownish elytra, takes its 

 delight in the grassy swamps of the New Forest, mottled over 

 with glandular sundews and downy Saint John's wort, where, 

 on June 18th, 1882, I listened to the males drawing the fiddle- 

 bows of their hind legs to the tune of "vree-vree!" as it were 

 the trickle of a rivulet. I have heard this music on the declivity 

 of Newland's Corner, near Guildford, once the resort of pic- 

 nickers, and in the swamp surrounding Odiham Castle, which, 

 we are given to believe, in the days of Simon de Montfort, was 

 the resort of Cranes, or as likely as not of Herons. In the West 

 Highlands I have heard it on the small island of Little Cumbrae, 

 and on the mainland of Kintyre, which an examination of the 

 peat-bogs intimates was once covered with silver birch. In 

 August, 1876, I chanced to be staying with Scotch relatives at 

 Whitehouse, on West Loch, Tarbert, and I often wandered up 

 the course of a brook where Erebia cethiops was fluttering about 

 among the water-dropwort, foxgloves, and honeysuckle. Here I 

 have sat down to listen to the green grasshoppers playing their 

 strathspeys and jigs many a time to while away the idle 



