OF GRASSHOPPERS AND PLANT-BUGS. 263 



such as might make the butterfly veil her richest pinions. 

 Many of these insects display on their broad wings or tegmina 

 a variety of colours, translucent and assuming the most bril- 

 liant hues when they pass before the light. One of them, the 

 Gryllus morlillosus, a native of China,'* is a glorious creature 

 for combination of colours. The tegmina, or wing-covers, are 

 purple and yellow ; the wings, glowing crimson spotted with 

 black ; the body is ringed by zones of black and yellow ; the 

 legs scarlet ; head and thorax coral-red. 



Speaking in another place of that ill-savoured, but not 

 always ill-favoured family, which bears the name of Bug, we 

 had occasion to remark, that such of its members as are fre- 

 quenters of the field and garden, and followers of the sun, 

 are arrayed usually in colours of corresponding liveliness : 

 witness the elegant Pentatomiclte, not more varied in form than 

 in markings and in hues, of which their prevailing ones are 

 black and red, buff, bright green, and variegated brown. We 

 have also amongst our native insects a bug of brilliant blue ;f 

 and the same colour, with other vivid tints, their lustre 

 heightened sometimes by metallic gloss, is displayed fre- 

 quently on their bug congeners in those foreign climates where 

 on insects, birds, and flowers the gifts of colour are richer and 

 more profusely lavished than beneath our tempered sunbeams. J 



* Figured and described by Donovan in ' Insects of India and China.' 



f Pentatoma carulea. 



\ For figures of these, and various splendid and curious insects of the orders 



