180 BRITISH ORTHOPTERA. 



eluding both sexes) had bright yellow legs, while all 

 the rest had them olive-coloured. 



DATE.- -Nymphs have been noted as occurring in 

 June and as late as the end of July, while adults have 

 been recorded in late July, August, September, and 

 till October the 6th, the best months for the species 

 being apparently August and September. R. ]\1. 

 Sotheby kept alive till a few days before 14 November 

 one captured on 22 July. 



HABITS, ETC.- -Cliff -sides covered with rough vegeta- 

 tion, thick herbage on sandhills, sunny hedge-banks, 

 beds of nettles, thistles, bramble-bushes, furze-bushes, 

 thickets, trees occasionally, and raspberry-canes in a 

 garden- -such are some of the spots chosen by the 

 " Great Green Grasshopper.' 1 In most of these places 

 so well is it protected by coloration that until it moves 

 or chirps it is not easily detected. Not perhaps so 

 skilful at hopping as some of its kind, it moves rapidly 

 nevertheless, running being apparently its chief mode 

 of progression : it is also able to fly. A curious habit 

 it has when crawling on a smooth surface. An 

 immature Locustid, presumably P. viridissima, was sent 

 to me 011 one occasion. It was put into an ordinary 

 breeding-cage, up the glass face of which it began to 

 crawl. While doing so it continually put its tarsi 

 into its mouth, apparently to make them wet, so that 

 they might cling the better to the smooth surface. 

 "W. Gr. Tenant* relates how one he kept in captivity 

 did exactly the same thing. 



Vegetable substances, maybe, are the normal food 

 of P. viridissima, and it certainly devours grass. 

 Morley found it upon and eating Angelica sylvestris, 

 while it has been noticed eating seeds of a dock placed 

 in its cage, and Luvoni fed a nymph he was rearing 

 011 Ranunculus repens. It, however, readily feeds on 

 animal matter, such as small grasshoppers, whose neck 

 one was noticed often to break before it ate them ; 



* 'Entomologist/ 1878, p. 183. 



