INSECT VARIETY. 181 



name of Blazops from tlie Dutcli colonists of the Cape. Unlike 

 the rest of the order likewise, they are said to stridulate at night. 



From the instances now cited, it will be sufficiently manifest 

 that the music of the s^rasshoppers is due to the rivalry of the 

 males, and that it fulfils the end 

 of collecting and distributing, as 

 well as of propagating, the races. 

 As a love-note, supplanting the 

 vocal music of the vertebrata at a 

 period of pairing previous to the 

 disappearance of the species, the 

 employment of this mechanical pneujtoea. 



stridor is also conspicuous. 



The operation of the music in collecting and distributing the 

 species will be inferred while listening to the nimble males singing 

 and responding over the meadows in the sunshine, or analytically, 

 on confining them in a well- ventilated receptacle, when the males 

 will be seen spitefully approaching one another and chirping, 

 repeating their stridor in snatches at midnight. Often when 

 the masculine sex are thus wrangling, a little attention will be 

 rewarded by bringing to view the newly-emerged females and 

 pupae, winding in among the grass-stems, and sluggishly near- 

 ing or following the performers, guided by and attending to the 

 repartees. As there is a manifest tendency in orthopterous 

 species to amalgamate during migration, due to indiscriminate 

 jealousy, that allows a loud stridulator to collect all the others in 

 a knot around him, the various means that diversify and appro- 

 priate the acridiideous music to the species, seen in the variation 

 of the veins played on, or the graduated development and 

 different position of the limse, must be all-important ; and it is 

 significant that, although male grasshoppers of divers species 

 may often be observed on grass-blades engaged in musical 

 contests, or a solitary individual energetically responding to the 

 ring of a leaf-cricket, each is able to recognise his proper and 

 often very variably coloured partner by sight. And on the 

 other hand I have observed two male 8tenohothri, differing as to 

 colour and species, when contending, draw two reluctant females, 

 that approached together, but who were at once discriminated by 

 their mates, who, after a murmur of recognition, leapt from their 



