INSECT VARIETY. 157 



of a second. But at nig-ht it becomes a repetition about eigbt 

 times of a note resembling " tchw/^ uttered at the rate of five times 

 in a second, and making each note one-half as long as the 

 diurnal. 



The musical vein in this genus is straight, attenuated 

 exteriorly ; above it is flat, and, as might be inferred from the 

 notes, but coarsely pectinated, showing in the common 

 European species only about twenty denticulations. The mirror 

 is oval. A slight rasping made by the females on closing their 

 elytra may be attributed to a limaform structure on the 

 marginal edge of the left anal field, probably a rudiment of the 

 masculine organ of music. In the island of Antigua one of 

 these leaf-crickets, in company with another of another genus, 

 flies to light in the evenings. 



The species of Conocepltaliis are as widely distributed as the 

 previous, but they are of humble habit, and creep in among the 

 dewy meadow grass, for which an elongate pisciform shape has 

 admirably adapted them. The shrill whistling *' vhree ! " of C. 

 mandibularis, Rossi, lasting three to four minutes with pauses 

 broken by " Wheat ! wheat ! " nightly resounds along the margin 

 of damp herbage at the river-banks in northern Italy, with hollow 

 conocephalian intonation, resembling the sound winding from 

 an oaten reed or reverberating in a sea-conch. This music, that 

 mingles with the wash of the Alpine torrents in August, 

 arises about eight in the evening, and sometimes continues 

 until dawn, but in bright moonlight it will suddenly subside 

 and cease about midnight. The males are only too easily 

 captured, and if encaged at a window as night comes on 

 vigorously answer their comrades without. And it will then be 

 found, that if the ear be approached the sound comes full and 

 intense with bee-like symphony, but let the observer retire ever 

 so little, the sound becomes deceptive with a dirling and hazy 

 echo well calculated to afford protection to the performers. 

 C. rohustus, a congener found near the sea-shore in the southern 

 parts of New England, emits a certain note at the rate of two- 

 and-a-half times a second, which to an observer near at hand 

 rises and falls rhythmically, and appears accompanied by a like 

 loud droning noise. The musical vein in these species is 

 straight, bowed downwards, fusiform and slightly f shaped; 



