568 ANNUAL EErOllT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 192 8 



Furthermore, life has endowed them with the most specialized file 

 veins known, a single file vein being in some instances furnished with 

 as many as three different sets of teeth, coarse, medium, and fine. 

 It would almost seem that the beetles had awakened to the possibili- 

 ties of having at their command several distinctive notes; or perhaps 

 there is a trend toward some manner of primitive musical scale such 

 as the birds employ with their vocal cords. As yet little is known, 

 however, concerning the sounds of the beetles, for they are too faint 

 to impress our ear readily. 



The grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets, also, have decided upon 

 the technique of the mechanical file vein and scraper, but so far as 

 known they have not given especial attention to noticeable modifi- 

 cations of the file vein which constitutes their chitinous fiddle. 

 Nevertheless, in some instances a marvelous technique has developed 

 which has centered around the touch-and-time relations between 

 scraper and file vein. 



THE MUSIC OF THE GRASSHOPPERS (ACRIDIDAE) 



If life in its evolutions is always a matter of slow and groping 

 trends from simplicity to complexity, one must expect to find long 

 lines of primitive impulses and expressions prior to the finish and 

 finesse of higher activities of living and doing. This seems to be 

 indicated in the case of our orthopteran musicians. The more lowly 

 grasshoppers of the family Acrididae are the more primitive musi- 

 cians. When on the wing they crackle and flutter lisping sounds, 

 although having almost no definite musical structures such as a 

 specialized file vein and scraper. In the case of some of the sulphur- 

 winged grasshoppers, such as the species of Arphia, the sound is 

 almost of the order of a clatter, reminding one of the snapping some- 

 times made by pigeons in flight. It is their idea of music, perhaps, 

 but the mechanical basis of it all is of the simplest and most indefi- 

 nite sort. Just how these noisy flight crepitations are made is not 

 even consistently agreed upon by naturalists. While the Arphias 

 and many others must catapult themselves in great trajectories and 

 swift aerial swoops to eke out their sounds, a few have learned to arise 

 from the soil gracefully and hover in mid-air while they " lisp " with 

 their wings for a few seconds. Our big gray or brown Carolina 

 grasshopper {Dissosteira Carolina) of the bare spots and dusty road- 

 ways is best known for this specialized hovering. 



The grasshoppers of another group have decided upon a more 

 sedentary method of making their music; they are the veritable 

 fiddlers of the insect world. A file vein with teeth, situated either 

 upon a large wing vein or upon a ridge of the inner thigh of the 

 great hind leg, constitutes the musical organ, with the plectrum or 

 scraper upon the opposite member. If tlie file vein is upon the leg 



