INSECT VARIETY. 175 



melanic deviations with uniform black elytra and sandy ochreous 

 sides, occurring by the sea-shore and on mountain-slopes, he 

 finds them to have a single note, lasting scarcely half or the 

 third of a second, and not repeated till after a repose of 

 double and triple that length, sometimes much longer; so that 

 we may commonly reckon only one note from two grasshoppers 

 in two seconds. For my own part, in the hay-fields of Italy, 

 where during the month of August I first learnt to distinguish 

 the Variable Grasshopper from its fellows by its habit of ex- 

 tending its wing-covers when leaping, I, by dint of wtftching, 

 came to perceive that it meted its stridor to some eight slow 

 and distinct double strokes, " Wheeh ! wheeh ! wheeli ! " &c. ; 

 but on returning to the Surrey Downs in the late autumn of 

 the same year, some straggling individuals lingering on in shel- 

 tered spots along the blackberry-hedges were only venting 

 themselves in two short drowsy notes, "Whirr ! whirr ! "" In the 

 pairing season, beneath the Calais ramparts, I have remarked this 

 music becomes considerably accelerated, and that it is prolono-ed 

 to ten or eleven simultaneous strokes of the femora, lastino- a 

 quarter of a minute. The teeth on the femora producing the 

 music are fewer than those enumerated previously for the grass- 

 hoppers with brisker action, numbering at most about seventy. 



The various grasshoppers now noticed belong to a group 

 where the keels on the pronotum of the thorax approach in an 

 hour-glass form. In another division these ridges, distinguished 

 often by their white or lighter tint anteriorly to the wino-s 

 apj)roach somewhat, but less markedly. One of these the 

 common though badly named Sfenobothncs ^^^(^^orum, the be- 

 ginner will perhaps earliest recognise by its thick cord-like 

 antennae and wing-covers coarsely netted in rectangles, resem- 

 bling in shape the blade of a penknife. The head is a little 

 prominent, and the hind wings when expanded are found to be 

 often quite rudimentary and unserviceable for sustention in the 

 air. As other green insects, this grass-stained grasshopper 

 frequents shade, and lurks on heaths and among bush and scrub. 

 Its prattle with that of the kind last noticed, belongs to the 

 category where the snatches of music are composed of a suc- 

 cession of brief notes, repeated at perceptible intervals. If we 

 trace the shadow thrown by a tree, according to Yersin, from 



