HuTTOK. — On New Zealand Stenopelmatidas. 209 



In New Zealand, however, they are generally thought to be 

 vegetable feeders; and, indeed, this has been proved to be 

 the case with a species of Hemideina by Mr. Brough, who 

 kept one alive in captivity and fed it on nuts and bark;* 

 also, it is difficult to see what animals the cave-wetas could 

 catch. 



The colours are usually some shade of bi-own — yellowish 

 or reddish or purplish — and variety is obtained by darker and 

 lighter shades. 



Two different kinds of sounds are made by species of 

 Hemideina. The first is called by Mr. J. Brough " a chattering 

 kind of sound," emitted at night; a sou)id which he had often 

 heard at night in the woods. Sir W. Buller states that 

 Hemideina thoracica makes, when disturbed, a clicking noise, 

 accompanied by a slow alternate movement of its powerful 

 hind legs.f Mr. Hudson says of H. inegacephala, " Both sexes 

 when irritated emit a peculiar grating sound, which may be 

 often heard at night in the forest, and is produced by the 

 friction of the (hind) femur against a small file situated on 

 each side of the second abdominal segment."! The sounding- 

 organ here referred to consists of six or seven oblique, parallel, 

 dark ridges near the lower margin of the second abdominal 

 tergum, on each side (Plate XII., fig. 46), and is equally 

 developed in both sexes. There is nothing on the inner 

 surface of the hind femur to correspond with this organ, but 

 possibly the inner lower edge may be sufficiently sharp to 

 make the file sound. The hind coxae are too distant. I 

 confess I do not see clearly how the sound can be made, and 

 if it had not been for Sir W. Buller's observations I should 

 have looked to the apical spines of the middle tibi^ for the 

 striking instrument. 



The genus Deinacrida has the same sounding-file, but it is 

 reduced to one or two ridges. In Onosandrus there is no 

 sounding-file, but several of the lobes of the anterior abdominal 

 terga are roughened, and this may act as a sound-producmg 

 organ ; however, I am not aware of any one having heard it. 

 Mr. Brough also says of his captive Hemideina, "I found 

 that he could bite fiercely, and when excited could hiss like an 

 adder." This seems to be a different kind of sound from the 

 other, and may be confined to the males. All those wetas 

 which are known to make sounds possess well-developed 

 auditory organs in the fore tibiie, and, as they make the 

 sounds at night, we may suppose that they are calling to each 

 other, notwithstanding the fact that the organ is similar in 



* Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxviii., p. 336. 



t Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. iii., p. 35. 



J " Manual of New Zealand Entomology," London, 1892, p. 113. 



