ORTHOPTERA 53 



brown or a dirty white color and more or less mottled with either lighter or 

 darker shades. Most of them fall in the genus Ceuthophilus (Fig. 86). 



These insects live in dark and moist places, under stones and rubbish, 

 especially in woods, in cellars, in the walls of wells, and in caves. They 

 are commonly called cave-crickets and some, because of the high arched 

 back, camel-crickets. 



THE SHIELD-BACKED GRASSHOPPERS 



These are mostly wingless or nearly wingless, dull-colored insects 

 which bear some resemblance to crickets. They present, however, a 

 queer appearance, due to the pronotum extending backward over the 

 rest of the thorax, like a sun-bonnet worn over the shoulders with the 

 back side forward. These insects live in grassy fields or open woods. 

 Most of them occur west of the Mississippi but a few of the genus Atldn- 



Fig. 87. — Atlanlicus. Fig. 88. — Stenopelmatus. 



ticus occur in the East (Fig. 87). Some of the shield-backed grasshop- 

 pers of the genus Anabrus, popularly known as the western cricket, invade 

 cultivated fields at times in the western states and destroy the crops. 



The sand-crickets of the Pacific Coast are not widely unrelated to the 

 shield-backed grasshoppers. They are clumsy creatures with big heads 

 that live under stones in loose soil. They belong to the genus, Sten- 

 opelmatus (Fig. 88). 



Family Gryllid^e 

 The Crickets 



In the more typical crickets the hind legs are fitted for leaping and the 

 antennae are long and slender. The tegmina lie flat on the back and are 

 bent down abruptly at the sides of the body like a box-cover. The 

 ovipositor is spear-shaped and wings are absent in some species. 



There are crickets, however, which have short antennas, some in which 

 the ovipositor is sword-shaped and a few without an ovipositor. 



With most species of crickets the males differ greatly in appearance 

 from the females. The males have musical organs which are even more 

 elaborate than those of the katydids and meadow grasshoppers. Here all 

 that part of each wing-cover that lies on the back is occupied by them. 

 This gives the males a very different appearance from the females, the 

 wing-covers of that sex being veined simply. 



During the latter part of summer and in the autumn the air is filled 

 with the chirping of crickets. It is an interesting thing to watch one of 



