150 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



position, he immediately made reprisals by eating a 

 hole into her side. Yet we had for several weeks 

 a great number of this species, both male and female, 

 hopping about our study, without one attempting to 

 prey on another. They manifested, however, not a little 

 mutual fear on a near approach, and in such cases 

 the male always uttered two or three notes of alarm, 

 and started away *. An eminent entomologist of 

 the present day having caught one of these insects, 

 and holding it by one of its hind-legs, it made a 

 sudden spring, and jerked off its leg: the limb was 

 put with the insect in a phial, and by the following 

 morning this portion of itself was half-devoured. 



Those who have been erroneously taught at school 

 to translate the Latin cicada and the Greek tbtti^, by 

 *' grasshopper," will perceive from these details that 

 it is a very mistaken notion to suppose these insects 

 feed on dew f. It is to the treehopper, and not to 

 the grasshopper, that these hues of Anacreon apply : 



Happy creature! what below 

 Can live more happily than thou ? 

 Seated on thy leafy throne, 

 (Summer weaves thy verdant crown,) 

 Sipping o'er the pearly lawn 

 The fragrant nectar of the dawn. 

 Little tales thou lovest to sing, 

 Tales of mirth — an infant king. 



But we need wonder less at popular mistakes of 

 this kind, when we find similar ones promulgated, 

 respecting the insects in question, by so eminent 

 a naturalist as Swammerdam. " I preserve," says 

 he, *' a three-fold stomach of a locust, which is very 

 like the stomachs of animals that chew the cud, 

 and particularly has that part of the stomach called 



*J. R. 

 t Virgil, Bucol. v. 77 ; Plin, Hist. Nat. xi. 26. 



