INSECT VARIETY. 161 



she approaches from behind, and informs him of her proximity 

 by strokes of the antennae ; he then ceases his music, throws 

 back his feelers to determine whether it be friend or foe, and 

 breaks forth into soft twittering notes, at the same time 

 drawing in his hind legs so as not to hinder her advance. This 

 species, termed by the Swedish peasants the Wart-biter, is nor- 

 mally green, with invisible elytral spots which the sun photographs 

 to brown, while the verdant hue is gradually bleached off the 

 elytra, and changed to brown and purple on the body. It eats 

 gramineous shoots, docks, and plantains, or bread, indiscrimi- 

 nately, which it touches first with its palpi. After feeding, it 

 moves the oral appendages as if ruminating.* In Southern 

 Europe, the Wart-biter gives place to Becticus albifrom, Fab., 

 another large and conspicuous species, there common on reeds in 

 marine marshes during the month of August, whose note Yersin 

 compares to that of the Saddled Leaf -crickets. 



The smaller European Dectici, the same writer remarks, repeat 

 their notes more slowly, and they thus seem to have connection 

 with those of the crickets. Their mirror is tolerably circular. A 

 common and distributed species, Becticus griseiis, has a whirring 

 note " cx'\," that in many places begins to be heard in tall rank 

 grass at the commencement of July. The smaller short-elytraed 

 I), hrachypterus, partial to damp soils, where heath, moss, and low 

 tangle mark unreclaimed or virgin land, jerks its elytra from 

 four to seven times with a sound of " Wirr ! wirr ! wirr ! " or as 

 Yersin gives it " Riee ! " and awaits response. If two males be 

 captured and enclosed together, they approach in the receptacle head 

 to head, or side to side, and maintain a ceaseless stridor ; the male 

 likewise crepitates when he encounters his female, or when she 

 meets him, and continues his music while in her proximity. 

 The stridulation of the very much alike brevipennis, Charp., Yersin 

 tells us, is first heard in the sunshine on grassy spots in the* 

 Vaudois valleys, at the end of June or beginning of July. At 

 this period the sound of the males, of which the timbre is 

 perfectly characteristic, is sustained but a few minutes. The 

 maturer note heard later on is indistinctly trilled and sustained 

 for an indefinite time, resembling much a distant hum, " eeee.^'' 



• The abortive lima of the female Wart-biter is shown ou Plate VI.. 

 L 



