The Orthoptera comprise a number of very different looking insects, among them some giants of the insect world like the stick and leaf insects. I have placed the earwigs, cockroaches, termites, embids, book lice, grasshoppers, crickets, mantis and phasmids together, though there is some difference of opinion among entomologists as to the exact position of the termites, embids, and book lice. The latest list of the Orthoptera is W. F. Kirby’s “Synonymic Catalogue of Orthoptera, vol. I.,” containing all the named species of the _Forficulidae_, _Hemimeridae_, _Blattidae_, _Mantidae_, and _Phasmidae_. This work was published by the Trustees of the British Museum, 1904: a second volume (not yet published) dealing with the locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets will complete this work. The latter were catalogued by F. Walker 1869–1870 in five parts, (Catalogue of the Specimens of Dermaptera, Saltatoria, and Supplement to the Blattariae in the British Museum), which this work of Kirby’s when finished will supersede. Among the chief specialists on Orthoptera may be mentioned Henri de Saussure, who besides his monographs in the “Biologia Centrali-Americana,” has published many papers in scientific journals, of which the most important (containing descriptions of Australian species) is his “Melanger Orthopterologiques” in the Memoirs de la Societe de Physique et d’Histoire Naturelle de Geneve 1863–4, and in subsequent volumes. Brunner von Wattenwyl has described other Australian species in different German publications, and in 1893 published his “Révision des Système des Orthoptères” in the Annali del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Genova. Kirby described other of our species chiefly in papers contributed to the “Annals and Magazine of Natural History,” and the Transactions of the Zoological and Entomological Societies. Family 1. Earwigs. FORFICULIDAE.