406 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW- YORK 



GRAPE. LEAVES. 



noticed the soDg of one of these insects proceeding from the same. 

 spot upon a mass of vines or upon a particular limb of a tree, 

 upon each evening for a number of nights in succession. And it. 

 is quite probable therefore, that the simple structure of their feet 

 incapacitates them for clinging and leaping about from one leaf to 

 another. 



Some of our most important information respecting the habits 



of the flower cricket we obtain from a Memoir published in 

 Italy more than a century ago, by M. Louis Salvi, no subsequent 

 writer appearing to have observed the same facts. From him we 

 learn that the female with her awl-like ovipositor pierces upon 

 their under side the green succulent stalks of the vegetation on 

 which she resides, to the very pith, and crowds commonly only a 

 pair of eggs into the nest thus formed. A number of these punc- 

 tures are made near each other, till her whole supply of eggs is 

 disposed of. The eggs remain till near the middle of the follow- 

 ing summer, when they give out the young crickets, which 

 resemble their parents in form, except that they are without 

 wings.- They secrete themselves in the thickest masses of leaves, 

 until they get their growth, changing their skin several times. 



In the southern part of our State the song of the flower cricket 

 begins to be heard as early as the first of August, but it is a week 

 later before it commences in the vicinity of Albany, and later 

 still in the more northern parts of the State. Perched among 

 the thick foliage of a grape vine or other shrubbery, some feet up 

 from the ground, and as already stated, remaining in the same 

 spot day after day, its song begins soon after sunset and before 

 the duskiness of twilight arrives. It is distinctly heard at a dis- 

 tance of several rods, and the songster is always farther off than 

 is supposed. Though dozens of other crickets and catydids are 

 shrilling on every side at the same time, the peculiar note of this 

 cricket is at once distinguished from all the rest, consisting of 

 repetitions of a single syllable, slowly uttered, in a monotonous 

 melancholy tone, with a slight pause between. The children 

 regard this cricket as no votary of the temperance cause; they 

 understand its song to consist of the words treat — treat — treat — • 

 treaty which words, slowly uttered, do so closely resemble its notes 

 that they will at once recall them to the recollection of almost 



