INSECT INSTEUMENTALISTS ALLARD 587 



black or melanistic individual of the snowy-tree cricket chirping in 

 the usual manner near Washington, D. C. Thus the story of life 

 goes on and on as it pleases, with eternal admonitions to the scientist 

 to beware of his theories and classifications, for they are transient 

 and unreal. 



THE HEARING ORGANS OF INSECTS 



Much has been written concerning the hearing organs of insects, 

 but I confess to grave feelings of doubt as to the correctness of many 

 of our views. That all insect instrumentalists hear their own sounds 

 T have not the slightest doubt, for I have positive evidence that their 

 hearing is exceedingly acute. I had at one time a female bush katy- 

 did, Phaneroptera curvicattda, in captivity in my bedroom, which 

 would lisp out responses to my own lisping mimicry as often as I 

 cared to stimulate it. In tests with this katydid I stepped away 

 slowly the entire length of the room, lisping so low as barely to hear 

 it myself, and yet it heard and responded promptly. We are told 

 that the ears or tympana of the grasshoppers, Acrididae, are on the 

 first segment of the abdomen, near the insertion of the wings. The 

 katydids and crickets, we are informed, have auditory structures on 

 the tibia of the forelegs, near the knee, on one or both sides. Notice- 

 able depressions and tympanal membranes are situated here, con- 

 necting with internal air chambers and sensory specializations involv- 

 ing the nerve structures. There are implications which are not 

 entirely clear, however, for, as mentioned by Snodgrass, the legs of 

 the honeybee show somewhat analogous structures, but without the 

 tympanal membrane. Of more puzzling import in this connection, 

 the tiny musical crickets, Falcicula hebardi, appear not to possess the 

 usual tibial auditory structures of crickets, and we wonder how they 

 hear their own sounds, musicians that they are. There is much to 

 be learned concerning the senses and sense impressions of insects, and 

 we, in our enormously greater magnitudes of body and mind and, let 

 me say, emphasized egotisms, must ever find it a stupendous task, 

 perhaps insurmountable, to see and think and feel truthfully in terms 

 of the insects themselves. 



THE MUSICAL MOODS OF THE CRICKETS AND KATYDIDS 



Just as we have in the human race people who are given to whis- 

 tling, humming, or singing, almost with exasperating persistency, so 

 we find our insect musician characterized by similar proclivities. 

 The moods of some insects incline them to an almost perpetual self- 

 expression until death silences them. Some of the cone-headed katy- 

 dids, as for instance the robust conehead, N eoconocephalus robustus^ 

 become mere humming machines all their days and nights, from 

 August, when they become adults, until frost kills them. Their 



