GREEN GRASSHOPPERS {LOCUSTID.E). 149 



Katydids. 



Amid the teeming exuberant insect orchestra ot the 

 American fields in autumn may be heard the notes of 

 the Katydids, the most notorious of the singing Locustids 

 — essentially American. There are several species of 

 them — they belong, indeed, to several genera— but the 

 song of all is supposed to suggest, more or less, the 

 words of their popular name. Katy-did, katy-did, or, 

 with variations, " O-she-did, katy-did-she-did," vociferates 

 the garrulous " testy little dogmatist." Green leapers 

 from leaf to leaf and from branch to branch, they might 

 far more appropriately be called tree-vaulters than 

 grasshoppers. Riley thus describes the music of the 

 Angular-winged Katydid, Microccntriiin rctiiiervc, the 

 commonest species in the Western and Southern States : 

 " The first notes from this katydid are heard about the 

 middle of July, and the species is in full song by the first 

 of August. The wing-covers are partially opened by a 

 sudden jerk, and the notes produced by the gradual 

 closing of the same. The song consists of a series of 

 from twenty-five to thirty raspings, as of a stiff quill 

 drawn across a coarse file. There are about five of 

 these raspings or trills per second, all alike, and with 

 equal intervals, except the last two or three, which, with 

 the closing of the wing-covers, run into each other. 



