162 



THE CAUSES WHICH PROPAGATE 



Among tall grass aud bushes, at Nice, occurs another species 

 Yersin terms Decticus sepium. Its music is described as a short 

 " cx€," repeated at intervals of uncertain length during the 

 day. The males of Decticus bicolor, Philip, are stated to have a 

 music shrilly and continuous. 



In the Saddled Leaf-crickets, or Cymbal Players, Herr Graber 

 finds the teeth have the form of triangular prisms, instead 

 of being, as in the majority of the leaf-crickets and crickets, 

 lamellar, elliptical, trapezoidal, or crescent-shaped. The common 

 Saddled Leaf-cricket of the Vine {Ephippujera vitiurn) has 

 especially thick cup-shaped elytra {e), in which is set a 

 circular smooth mirror, somewhat obliquely situated, 

 and also a shrill-vein of uniform thickness, with from 

 ninety to one hundred dentations. The sexes crepitate 



among bushes on 

 elevations near 

 vineyards in 

 South Europe 

 from August un- 

 til October, where 

 the male chirps 

 twice and his 

 female once in 

 the sunshine. A 

 kindred species, Ejohippigera terrestris, Yersin found at 

 Frejus and Grass, in the wheat-fields after the harvest, haunt- 

 ino- the borders of unfrequented paths, where the ferruginous 

 colour of the soil afforded it mimetic protection. Its diurnal 

 music much resembled that of the Cinereous Cricket, being 

 sliort, plaintive, somewhat intense, and repeated at considerable 

 intervals. Another species or variety of Saddled Leaf-cricket 

 • {E. provincialis) , noticed by the same observer, holds the covert of 

 thick bushes and hedges, or may be observed climbing the vines 

 and young trees, and here during the day it emits a music re- 

 sembling that of the Great Green Leaf-cricket, or Wart-biter 

 — an acute " zig-zig-zig,^^ repeated indefinitely and without 

 interruption. 



Orphania denticauda, Charp., a smaller green cricket with 

 cup-shaped elytra that Yersin used to meet with, in his 



SADDLED LEAF-CKICKET OF THE VINE. 



