Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, and Crickets 157 



of which sing very pleasantly. In Idaho and other northwestern states 

 a large corpulent wingless Locustid, called the western cricket, Anabrus 

 purpurascens (Figs. 218 and 219), often occurs in 

 such numbers as to be very destructive to crops. 

 The body of this cricket is ij inches long and 

 i inch thick. The ovipositor is three-fourths as 

 long as the body, slightly curved, and sword-shaped 

 with a sharp point. This species forms march- 

 ing armies in Nevada, with two miles of front and 

 a thousand feet of depth. On the Pacific Coast 

 occurs a large, awkward, thick-legged, transversely 

 striped form, Stenopelmatus, called sand-cricket or 

 Jerusalem cricket (Fig. 220). It is found under 

 stones or in the soil, has a large smooth head with 

 "baby-face," and is believed to feed on dead plant 

 or animal matter. 



The crickets that we know best are the black 

 and brown ones of the house and the fields; but 

 there are members of the cricket family, the Gryl- 



Lida;, that live in trees and are pale greenish white, Fig. 221. A common 



and others that burrow into the ground and have cricket, Gryllus pennsyl- 

 broad shovel-like fore feet, and still other curious Lugger- natural size in- 

 little wingless pygmies that live as guests in ants' dicated by line.) 

 nests. But the house- and field-crickets represent the more usual or we 

 might say normal and typical kind of Gryllid; 

 the others are modifications or offshoots of this 

 type, both in habit and structure. In all the 

 antennae are long and slender (except in the 

 burrowing forms, longer thaii the body), the hind 

 legs long and thickened for leaping, and the 

 ovipositor, when exserted and visible, long, slender, 

 subcylindrical and lance- or spear-like. Well- 

 developed wings and wing-covers are present in 

 most species, and the males are provided with a 

 very effective stridulating organ on the bases of 

 the wing-covers. 



In the familiar black, bright-eyed, loud-voiced 

 house- and field-crickets the wing-covers when 

 folded on the body are flat above and bent down 

 sharply at the edge of the body like a box-cover, and the veins in the males 

 are curiously changed in course and specially thickened and roughened 

 to make a sound-producing organ. This organ is illustrated in Fig. 222. 



Fig. 222. — Cricket and file 

 (part of the sound-making 

 apparatus). (Cricket nat- 

 ural size; the file greatly 

 magnified.) 



