DISTRIBUTE INSECT VARIETY. 295 



the seven red, blue, and yellow so-called European sorts at 

 present accredited to this genera, some do appear very ordinary 

 varieties due to climate or soil ; for certainly wing colou.rs, to 

 say nothing of stature and form, vary most deceptively in these 

 locusts. Sometimes in our cabinets we notice the flowery wings 

 more or less destitute of colours and diaphanous, especially as 

 regards their front and outer margins ; and then in others of 

 the series there come a warm flush and row of dark spots 

 blotting over the disc, which change to lines and bands, or, 

 spreading, widen out, until they frame the gay wings in an umber 

 or inky setting. Herr Fischer has fully illustrated this trans- 

 formation, or rather the inverse, as it occurs on the Palaearctic 

 area in that dwarfed rosy-winged waif of African extraction, 

 the (Edipoda insubrica of Scopuli, whose bright tropic hues may 

 be rarely seen glancing as far north as the grand old Alpine 

 barrier; and in his two blue species of Northern and Sovithern 

 Europe we fancy we again trace the identical lineaments of 

 change. 



The frequent grasshopper green, like all insect verdure, 

 presents changeable chlorophyll-like properties ; but here chronic 

 disinvestment of the vernal hue in the individual for the garb 

 of sere autumn is much more pronounced. As on the soon 

 bleaching wing of green geometric moths, these changes are 

 photographic, and mostly ensue subsequent to skin casting, 

 spreading from various parts of the dermis as discolouring 

 stains of brown, grey, yellow, flesh colour, or rosy red, according 

 to the species and specific pigment. So that in running over a 

 collection we sometimes notice specimens where this morpho- 

 logical process has been arrested in one or other of its stages, 

 and find grasshoppers and leaf -crickets that present portions of 

 their elytra, thorax, or legs that yet retain their primitive 

 hue, while the rest of their body is liveried with the humid 

 brands of vegetable decay. Yet we cannot thereby infer that the 

 species is prematurely decrepid ; for in the large voracious Wart 

 Biter, a parrot-like transition after emergence serves to develop 

 an invisible pattern of brown spots, which renders the indi- 

 viduals to human optics considerably more conspicuous and suited 

 to recognise and reproduce their kind. Before passing on it may 

 be likewise observed that structural changes have been reputed 



