STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS. 157 



tree ; but this is a fact which I have witnessed, and it 

 can be explained very easily. It is really no more 

 remarkable than our ordinary process of grafting. 

 The seeds of the Clusia alba, et rosea, a species of gam- 

 boge tree, when fully matured, burst their pods, and 

 enclosed in a gummy substance, they drop from the 

 tree, like so many caterpillars letting themselves down 

 by a fine filament to the ground. If one of these trees 

 stand near a mahogany tree, the seeds are blown by 

 the wind, as the swing in the air, against the trunk of 

 the latter tree, and being covered with the viscid gam- 

 boge, they adhere to its bark, take root in it, and in 

 the course of a few years they change its whole cha- 

 racter. The trunk and branches of the mahogany tree 

 gradually decay and drop off, and in its stead grows 

 the gamboge tree, trunk, branches and all. 



Crickets, (Acheta.) 



The Cricket has already been immortalized in the 

 English poetry of Cowper, and although its race may 

 become extinct, as long as the languages endure, it 

 still must be familiar to all. Its pleasant song from 

 June to October, during the whole season of tropical 

 illusions, has excited much admiration in the lovers of 

 nature for many ages ; and the pleasing reminiscences 

 of love and of home which its chirping arouses, re- 

 cently so touchingly portrayed in that admirable lit- 



