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 A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK crickets we can only boast of Gryllus domesticus, which is often heard shrilling in bake-houses in Ipswich and Yarmouth, though rarely seen ; it is said to be an immigrant from northern Africa, appears to be confined to such warm situations as the above, and has, at least in Suffolk, never been found in the open country. Mr. Tuck tells me he has found Gryllus campestris about Tostock, in Mid-Suffolk ; and it is extremely probable that the Mole Cricket {Gryllotalpa vulgaris) also lives in the county, since Kirby and Spence record it from Ickleton, in Cambridgeshire. NEUROPTERA Dragon-flies, Stone-flies, Lacewings, Caddis-Jiies, i^c. Under this head I shall, for the sake of convenience, group all the heterogeneous families that have at various times been allowed to pass as possible members of this order of insects since, in a work like the present, it is good to give as comprehensive a conspectus as can be set out. Among the dragon-flies we find many species have been recorded from Suffolk in The Entomalogists' Annual of 1 86 1, Entomologists' Monthly Magazine, znA The Entomologist, in Y.vans^ British Libellulidae, MacLachlan's Trichoptera, and Lucas's recent work ; Paget refers to a few, and Winter collected some nice things in the neighbourhood of Aldeby near Beccles, which are mentioned in the Entomologists' Weekly Intelligencer, vol. ix. Personally I have never been able to raise the enthusiasm in these insects necessary to their thorough investigation, but have picked up a goodly number at odd times by casual collecting ; the present list forms a fair basis for future work, but can scarcely be considered thoroughly representative of, nor to do justice to, our fine stretches of both running and stagnant water. My sluggishness in this direction is the more inexcusable, since Mr. MacLachlan had hoped great things from our broads of the north-east. The Thysanura have, with little justification, been included in this Order, and may be treated of here, since but two species have been noticed. I have no doubt that the Silver Fish, Lepisma saccarina, so common in the store-cupboards of old houses, occurs here in plenty, though I have met with it only in my own house and in Monk Soham Church. The other species, of which I shook two examples out of a grass-sod at Hitcham, Prof. Henslow's parisji, early in October 1899, is Campodea staphylinus, and is said by Lord Avebury to represent the ancestral type of insect. These Thysanura undergo no metamorphoses, and never develop wings ; they consequently fall into the ametabolic section of the Insecta. The Plecoptera, Ephemeridae, and Odonata, on the contrary, do undergo transformations of a modified form, that is to say, that, although the larva, pupa, and imago differ from one another, there is no quiescent stage in their lives. To the former also belong the CoUembola or ' spring-tails,' of which a great many species are extremely common, though they have never been adequately collected, in Suffolk. In 1904 I put a few specimens of this curious group in spirits while collecting other insects in the Ipswich district ; they proved to belong to eight species : Orchesella cincta, Linn. ; O. pilosa, Geof. ; Tomocerus plumbeus, Linn. ; Templetonia crystallina, MilU. ; Seira domestica, Nic. ; S. Buskii, Lub. ; the rare Lepidccjrtus curvi- collis, Bour. ; and DeGeeria Nicoletii, Lub. Among the Pseudo-neuroptera, Airopos divinatcria is sometimes quite a pest in my collections, and radical measures become occasionally necessary for its extermination. I have taken at Sproughton, Ipswich, and on gorse in the Bentley Woods, Clothilla picea, or the rural book-louse. Of the pretty genus Psocus, P. longicornis is widely distributed on trees in the Bentley Woods, Barham, and Barnby Broad ; P. nebulosus is not rare in the former locality in the autumn ; I have taken P. fasciatus at Barton Mills and Brandon in June, and P. bifasciatus, recorded from Suffolk by Hagen, in Tuddenham Fen in September. Hagen also records P. variegatus, which has occurred to me at Freston, and P. morio from our county, Steno- psocus cruciatus is common in the Bentley Woods, Staverton, Ipswich, and Monk Soham ; S. immacu- latus and S. stigmaticus are also found here, the latter at Foxhall and Brandon. Caecilius pedicularius seems to be attracted by light since I have taken it in my study at night ; once it occurred to me commonly in a dead calf at Foxhall ; ^ it is doubtless abundant, and C. flavidus has been observed on the banks of the Gippingat Ipswich in September, and at Tuddenham, Wherstead, Freston, and Foxhall ; C.piceus was swept from reeds at Southwold in September 1907, and C.fuscopterus was very common in Bentley Woods in September 1904. In October 1899 I was so fortunate as to sweep a specimen of the extremely rare C. atricornis in a small marshy wood at Bramford ;' this would appear to have been little more than the second known specimen ; and in September 1907 another turned up in a ditch at Mildenhall at the other extremity of the county. Mr. J. J. King took about twenty examples of C. Kolbei,'Tetens, the first in Britain, on 16 August 1892, just within the entrance to Tuddenham Fen, by sweeping the dry stems of ragwort, in the vicinity of Coots fir.* ' Cf. Ent. Mo. Mag. i 899, p. 273. • Ibid. 272. ' Ibid, v, 244. 104