456 FAMILY VII. TETTIGONIIDJE. THE KATYDIDS. 



as a prima donna does in singing to an audience. There is a 

 pleasure in the act which is the outcome of its being; and the fact 

 that the males are principally the players, shows that the gift is 

 not only a source of pleasure, but one of much importance to the 

 species ; for the rivalry among the males is as great as among 

 higher animals, and a good instrument becomes, in this light, most 

 important to the individual and to the species. The best player 

 wins his coveted love, while the feeble and the cripples stand no 

 chance to impair the vigor of the race." 



While only the males are musicians, both sexes of the winged 

 forms are provided with supposed auditory organs or ears. These, 

 when present, are similar in structure and position to those of the 

 cricket, being oblong or oval cavities covered with a transparent 

 or whitish membrane, known as the drum or tympanum, and sit- 

 uated one on each front leg, near the basal end of the tibia?. The 

 drum is a thin, tense membrane covering a network of nerves, gang- 

 lion cells and auditory rods. In all the wingless Tettigoniida? the 

 stridulating organs are necessarily absent and as the insect can 

 make no sound, it has no use for ears and these are also absent. 

 This is taken as strong evidence that the cavity on the fore leg is 

 in reality an auditory organ, which is denied by Forel (1887) 

 and some other writers, who believe that all insects are deaf with 

 no special organs of hearing, but that sounds are heard or appre- 

 ciated by their tactile organs. 



The color of each species of Tettigoniidse is, as in most Orthop- 

 tera, admirably adapted to its usual surroundings. The winged 

 forms, as the katydids and cone-headed grasshoppers, live amidst 

 the foliage of trees or clumps of grass, and are therefore a nearly 

 uniform bright green, while the wingless forms, which dwell in 

 caves or hollow trees and beneath rocks and logs are, for the most 

 part, gray or brown in hue. Our larger species, with wings fully 

 developed, use them as their principal means of travel, their 

 slender hind legs being used only to give themselves an upward 

 impetus at the beginning of flight. 



In both the northern and southern states the members of this 

 family winter chiefly in the egg stage, the eggs being laid in 

 grasses, reeds, galls on willow, stems of plants, bark of trees and 

 shrubs and even between the upper and lower layers of leaves, 

 the ovipositor being especially adapted for this method of egg 

 deposition. In southern Florida some of the species pass the win- 

 ter, in part at least, as nymphs, or even as adults, but the number 

 of both species and individuals then there found is far less numer- 

 ous than of the Acrididie. The young of the Tettigoniidse, like 



