Katydids. 



361 



food of the wasps cannot be stored up except in the stupefied living condition ; and 

 we may take it that with the evokition of the permanent community came the 

 discovery that honey was a food that could be stored without losing its value, 



Most animals would hesitate to attack a wasp's nest, especially one so large 

 as that of the honey-wasp ; but the jaguar is said to do so in spite of the stout 

 cardboard spines that bristle all over the exterior of the nest. It may be supposed 

 that the sharp, strong claws of 

 such an animal would have little 

 difficulty in tearing open the card- 

 board box, and breaking off por- 

 tions of the comb. Apparently, 

 in this case it is the grubs in the ^^™^ ^1 

 comb rather than honey that is the ^^^S r \ 

 attraction to the jaguar. 



Katydids. 



In reading stories b\- American 

 authors who have laid their scenes 

 in rural surroundings, one is sure 

 to come upon references to the 

 katydids and their shrill songs, 

 whose sole burden is the reiterated 

 assertion that Katy did something 

 or other. As a rule we get no 

 further. Every American reader 

 knows so well what a katydid is 

 that it is c|uite unnecessary for the 

 writer to explain that katydids 

 are several species of long-horned 

 grasshoppers which agree in utter- 

 ing sounds that resemble the words, 

 " Katy did," with variations. The 

 reader who knows the long-horned 

 great green grasshopper ^ of the 

 South of England, that sits in the 

 bushes and pours out a succession 

 of ear-piercing trills, will know in 

 a general way what the katydids 

 are like. The sounds in both cases 

 are not \'ocal but purely mechani- 

 cal, and are produced by the bases of the Insect's wing-covers. Kiley says of this 

 sound-production by one of the commonest species of katydid : — " 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 (]uill drawn across a coarse file. There are about five of these raspings or 



' Locusta viridissima. 



Interior ok Ho.\ey-\V.\sp's Nest. 



A specimen of the nest, whose exterior is shown on page 359, has had the 

 walls partly stripped ol! to show the internal structure. The walls are of 

 a kind of papier machc, to which the combs are connected by their edges. 

 All the combs are curved, and the cells open on the converse side of the 

 curve. The nest is often upwards of two feet in length, with a circumfer 

 ruce of three feet at the lower part. 



