160 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



immediately made reprisals by eating a hole into her 

 side. Yet we had for several weeks a great number 

 of this species, both male and female, hopping about 

 our study, without one attempting to prey on another. 

 They manifested, however, not a little mutual fear on 

 a near approach, and in such cases the male always 

 uttered two or three notes of alarm, and started away.* 

 An eminent entomologist of the present day having 

 caught one of these insects, and holding it by one of 

 its hind-legs, it made a sudden spring, and jerked off 

 its leg : the limb was put with the insect in a phial, 

 and by the following morning this portion of itself was 

 half-devoured. 



Those who have been erroneously taught at school 

 to translate the Latin cicada and the Greek T£TTi|, by 

 ' grasshopper' will perceive from these details that it is 

 a very mistaken notion to suppose these insects feed 

 on dew. I It is to the treehopper, and not to the grass- 

 hopper, that these lines of Anacreon apply : 



Happy cre.^ture ! what below 

 Can live more happily than thou ? 

 Seated on thy leafy throne, 

 (Summer weaves ihy verdant crown,) 

 Sipping o'er the pearly lawn 

 The fragrant nectar of the dawn, 

 Little tales thou lovest to sing. 

 Tales of mirth — an infant king. 



But we need wonder less at popular mistakes of 

 this kind, when we find similar ones promulgated, 

 respecting the insects in question, by so eminent a 

 naturalist as Swammerdam. ' I preserve,' says he, 

 * a three-fold stomach of a locust, which is very like 

 the stomachs of animals that chew the cud, and par- 

 ticularly has that part of the stomach called echinus 



* J. R. 

 t Virgil, Bucol. V. 77; Plin. Hist. Nat, xi, 26. 



