92 PROCEEDINGS ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Various efforts have been made to set to music the notes of 

 Orthoptera. Scudder made the attempt with the songs of a 

 number of species 48 and Regen has attempted it with the notes 

 of Thamnotrizon.^ The results of these efforts look interesting 

 but a lack of musical training prohibits my judging their merit. 



A species of large katydid is kept captive by natives in South 

 America for the sake of its song 50 and the natives of Africa are 

 lulled to sleep by the song of caged crickets. 81 Some species, in- 

 deed, are objects of barter in some regions. Thus gryllids are 

 sold in little cages in the streets of Florence on Ascension day as 

 songsters 52 and caged crickets are sold in Portugal for their song 

 and for the good luck which they are supposed to bring their 

 owner. 55 



Considerable use is made of Orthoptera in sport, especially in 

 China and Japan. The Chinese are much given to gambling and 

 will bet on anything and are said to win and lose fortunes on 

 cricket fights as American sportsmen win or lose at horse races. 

 In China the fighting crickets are trained and cared for as care- 

 fully as if they were blooded horses. They are given a fixed diet, 

 partly of honey and boiled chestnuts, and if one falls ill it is fed 

 on mosquitoes. A good cricket fight will last half an hour and, 

 to win, one of the combatants must slay his adversary or throw 

 him bodily over the six-inch wall inclosing the arena. These 

 fighting crickets, which are all males, are bought and sold like 

 horses, one with a good record bringing five or ten dollars, while 

 a champion often sells for as much as fifty dollars. 



My initial plans for the present discussion included the con- 

 sideration of the economic relations of the Orthoptera to man 

 both directly and indirectly. But I soon decided that the first, 

 and by far the smaller, phase of this general subject would suf- 

 fice even when discussed as briefly as above. The second phase, 

 even if treated as briefly as I have covered my subject this eve- 

 ning, would form a paper far too long for such an occasion. Even 

 the one subject of injurious locusts and the havoc they play with 

 vegetation would require a paper as long, if not longer, than that 

 which I have presented this evening, and I therefore leave the 

 consideration of their indirect relations for some future time. 



48 Hitchcock's Kept. Geol. N. Hampshire, vol. 1, p. 362-380 (1874); 

 twenty-third Ann. Kept. Ent. Soc. Ontario, 1892, p. 62-78 (1893). 



49 Sitz. her. Akad. Wiss. Wien. Math. Nat. Klasse, vol. x^vii, p. 487- 

 488 (1908). 



60 Bates, Journ. Ent., vol. i, p. 474-477 (1863). 

 51 Moufet, Ins. Theatr., p. 136 (1634). 



52 Burr, Proc. S. Lond. Ent. Soc., 1899, p. (12-13) (1900). 



53 Bather, Bull. Brooklyn Ent. Soc., vol. viii, p. 56 (1913). 



