Chap. X.] HOMOPTERA. 341 



in speaking of the cicada septemdechn of the United 

 States, says : 24 " The drums are now (June 6th and 7th, 

 1851) heard in all directions. This I believe to be the 

 marital summons from the males. Standing in thick 

 chestnut-sprouts about as high as my head, where hun- 

 dreds were around me, I observed the females coming 

 around the drumming males." He adds : " This season 

 (August, 1868) a dwarf pear-tree in my garden produced 

 about fifty larvae of Clc. pruinosa; and I several times 

 noticed the females to alight near a male while he was ut- 

 tering his clanging notes." Fritz Muller writes to me 

 from Southern Brazil that he has often listened to a musi- 

 cal contest between two or three males of a Cicada, hav- 

 ing a particularly loud voice, and seated at a considerable 

 distance from each other. As soon as the first had fin- 

 ished his song, a second immediately began ; and after lie 

 had concluded, another began, and so on. As there is so 

 much rivalry between the males, it is probable that the 

 females not only discover them by the sounds emitted, but 

 that, like female birds, they are excited or allured by the 

 male with the most attractive voice. 



I have not found any well-marked cases of ornamental 

 differences between the sexes of the Homoptera. Mr. 

 Douglas informs me that there are three British species, 

 in which the male is black or marked with black bands, 

 while the females are pale-colored or obscure. 



Order, Orthoptera. — The males in the three saltatorial 

 families belonging to this Order are remarkable for their 

 musical powers, namely, the Achetidse or crickets, the 

 Locustidse for which there is no exact equivalent name in 

 English, and the Acridiidae or grasshoppers. The stridu- 

 lation produced by some of the Locustidae is so loud that 



24 1 am indebted- to Mr. Walsh for having sent me this extract- from a 

 'Journal of the Doings of Cicada septemdecim,' by Dr. Hartman. 



