136 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



body is about half an inch long, exclusive of the wing-covers. 

 The female is usually rather longer, but the wing-covers are 

 much narrower than those of the male, and there is a great 

 diversity of coloring in this sex; the body being sometimes 

 almost white, or pale greenish yellow, or dusky, and blackish 

 beneath. There are three dusky stripes on the head and tho- 

 rax, and the legs, antennae, and piercer are more or less dusky 

 or blackish. The wing-covers and wings are yellowish white, 

 sometimes with a tinge of green, and the wings are rather 

 longer than the covers. Some of these insects have been sent 

 to me by a gentleman who found them piercing and laying 

 eggs in the branches of a peach-tree. Another correspondent, 

 who is interested in the tobacco culture in Connecticut, in- 

 formed me that they injured the plant by eating holes in the 

 leaves. 



2. Grasshoppers. (Gryllidce.) 



Grasshoppers, properly so called, as before stated, are those 

 jumping orthopterous insects which have four joints to all their 

 feet, long bristle-formed antennae, and in which the females are 

 provided with a piercer, flattened at the sides, and somewhat 

 resembling a sword or cimeter in shape. The wing-covers 

 slope downwards at the sides of the body, and overlap only a 

 little on the top of the back near the thorax. This overlapping 

 portion, which forms a long triangle, is traversed, in the males, 

 by strong projecting veins, between which, in many of them, 

 are membranous spaces as transparent as glass. The sounds 

 emitted by the males, and varying according to the species, are 

 produced by the friction of these overlapping portions together. 



In Massachusetts there is one kind of grasshopper, which 

 forms a remarkable exception to the other native insects of 

 this family; and, as it does not seem to have been named or 

 described by any author, although by no means an uncommon 

 insect, it may receive a passing notice here. It is found only 

 under stones and rubbish in woods, has a short thick body, 

 and remarkably stout hind thighs, like a cricket, but is entirely 

 destitute of wing-covers and wings, even when arrived at ma- 



