Ixxii iNTEODUCTIOlSf. 



selection, in whom a taste for colour has already been 

 aroused by the influence of flowers, fruits, or brilliant 

 insects, — their habitual food." 



It has been suggested that the brilliant Chrysididse, 

 which feed on larvas and which fly in the hot sun- 

 shine, do not choose bright flowers, but affect dry 

 dingy-coloured rocks and palings. 



How far insects knowingly choose their lairs is yet 

 open to question. Though colour is a lure to some 

 insects, yet it is not actively so in all cases. The bees 

 do not fail to extract honey from the lime blossom, the 

 mignonette, and numerous other flowers, though the 

 petals are pale green, or colourless. Again, the gaudy 

 reds of the Salvia canlinalis and the Ahiitilon venosiim 

 have not opened to the bees the fact that, within and 

 from their nectaries, honey is secreted so largely that 

 the produce of a single flower is much more than 

 sufficient for a bee to carry away in its honey-stomach 

 in one journey ; yet hundreds of flowers of the purple 

 heath must be visited before she can charge herself 

 for the hive ! 



The effect of odours on insects is perhaps more 

 exemplified than that of colour. The action of a very 

 small quantity of chloroform vapour diluted in air, or 

 that of a volatile cyanide compound, is almost 

 instantaneous on the Cicadae. Doubtless this vapour 

 is drawn into the tracheae, and at once it produces 

 stupor. A few puffs of harmless smoke passed into a 

 hive will, for the time, so quiet the bees that they will 

 submit to be handled, and even permit their full 

 honeycombs to be taken from them, without provoking 

 them to sting. 



Besides the simulation of colour of their sur- 

 roundings shown by some species, the Aphrophorae 

 have the remarkable habit of blowing up a spume or 

 foam under which they hide. Further remarks on this 

 curious economy will be found under the Diagnosis of 

 the Genera. 



The ample elytra and wings of the Tettigida) are 



