15^ 



Marvels of Insect Life, 



unusual a situation, one has to admit that they are admirabh' placed 

 for hearing, for they are carried in front of the body, and the legs can 

 be turned easily so that the ear-slits face the direction from which the sounds 

 are coming. 



The great green grasshopper, ^ the largest of our native hoppers, is a very 

 fine creature, and a musician of great power. On this account he is 

 frequently kept as a pet, perhaps not so much because his singing 

 appeals to the musical ear, but rather because of the wonder that so 

 small an animal should produce so strong and penetrating a note. He 

 is probably far more carnivorous than herbivorous, and will catch flies 

 with his fore-legs and devour them. Entomologists who " sugar " trees 

 to attract the night-flying moths often have cause to complain of 

 this Insect, who walks up the tree-trunks and picks off the moths 

 from the sugar-patch for his own supper. They have also, like the 

 moths, a weakness for the sugary fluid itself, and probably are first attracted 

 by its smell, and only by accident find the more substantial fare. Another, 



the variable green long-horned 

 grasshopper,^ which is some- 

 times mistaken for the last- 

 mentioned, has also a taste for 

 an Insect diet, for we have 

 found it devouring the chrysalis 

 of a moth. 



The katydids of North 

 America — which we shall deal 

 with separately — are also 

 among the long-horns. Some 

 members of the family are re- 

 markable in \\'a3's other than as 

 musicians. Some of them are cave-dwellers, and though these are minus wings and 

 ears, they have legs and antennas developed to enormous length. The 

 similarity of these one to another is astonishing — though the\' are only distantly 

 related species and found in parts of the world so far apart as the ca\'esof Austria, 

 Kentucky, and New Zealand. They afford a good illustration of the fact that 

 identity of habit often brings about similarity of structure. Many of the \\-ing(xl 

 species are good examples of protective coloration, their ample wing-C()\-ers being 

 not only of a bright green colour, which renders them in\-isible wlien at rest among 

 vegetation, but some of them exhibit a close resemblance to llu' \-eining of K-aves, 

 and a finishing touch is sometimes added in the shajx' of spots ^uch as in real leaves 

 are due to the attacks of fungi and Insects. One of the leaf-like kind is the great 

 shielded grasshopper,^ which Wallace found in New Guinea, and which is Jive inches 

 long. This fine grasshoj^per has tlu> fore-body covered by a large, triangular, horny 

 shield, two and a half inches long, with tootluxl edges, a somewhat wavy, hollow 

 surface, and a faint line down the centre, so as to resemble a leaf \-ery closely. " The 

 glossy wing-coverts (when fully expanded more than nine inches across) are of a fine 



1 Locusta viridissima. - IMcconema varians. ' Rlcsalodon cnsilcr. 



A Grasshopper that IMimics an Ant. 



The actual sizeof thisspeciesis only one-third of an inch long, and by most observers 

 it would be passed over as an ant. Owing to the disposition of colour on the body 

 it appears to have the form of an ant, and probably it thus escapes molestation in 

 a country where ants are plentiful. It is a native of the Sudan. 



