THE CICADELLINA. 411 



parent elytra, the veins of whicli are spotted with 

 black and white, and which usually exhibit one or 

 more brownish bands. The antennae in this insect 

 and its allies are small, composed of two short joints 

 and a slender bristle, but in some other species of 

 this tribe, forming the genera Asiraca and Delphax, 

 the antennae, although still consisting only of two 

 joints and a bristle, are much longer, and make their 

 appearance distinctly at the sides of the head. This 

 is especially the case in Asiraca, in which the antennae 

 are nearly half as long as the body, with the first joint 

 by much the longest, compressed and angular. Two 

 or three species are recorded as British, but of these 

 only one, the Asiraca clavicornis, is at all common ; it 

 is found in grassy places, especially about woods. 



If the British entomologist have reason to com- 

 plain of the few representatives which we possess of 

 the two preceding tribes, this is not the case with the 

 next one, of which we have an immense number of 

 species, many of them of great beauty. 



Every one must have remarked, especially during 

 the early part of the summer, the occurrence, upon 

 many plants and shrubs in our gardens, of curious 

 little masses of froth, generally known to gardeners 

 under the name of Cuckoo-spits, from a very ancient 

 idea that that singular bird the Cuckoo was in some 

 way connected with their production. On examming 

 some of these Cuckoo-spits, however, we soon discover 

 the real cause of their formation in the shape of a 

 small, yellow, soft insect, with brown eyes which seem 

 to stare at us in a glassy, expressionless manner, 

 worthy of the ghastly shipmates of Coleridge's Ancient 



