Ij'JS NOISES OF INSECTS. 



thing- that is rural, verdurous, and joyous." One of 

 these crickets, when confined in a paper cage and set in 

 the sun, and supplied with plants moistened with water 

 — for if they are not wetted it will die — will feed, and 

 thrive, and become so merry and loud, as to be irksome 

 in the same room >^hcre a person is sitting''. 



Having never seen a female of that extraordinary 

 animal the mole-cricket (Giv/fhtafpa vulgaris, Latr.), I 

 cannot say what difference obtains in the reticulation 

 of the elytra of the two sexes. The male varies in thisi 

 respect from the other male crickets, for they have no 

 circular area, nor do the nervures run so irregularly; 

 the areolets, however, toward their base are large, 

 with very tense membrane. The base itself also is 

 scarcely at all elevated. Circumstances these, which 

 demonstrate the propriety of considering them distinct 

 from the other crickets. This creature is not however 

 mute. Where they abound they may be heard about 

 the middle of April singing their love-ditty in a low, 

 dull, jarring, uninterrupted note, not unlike that of 

 the goat-sucker {Caprwudguseuropceus^\j.), but more 

 inward '^. I remember once tracing one by its shrilling 

 to the very hole, under a stone, in the bank of my ca- 

 nal, in which it was concealed. 



Another tribe of grasshoppers (Loctista, F.) — the 

 females of which are distinguished by their long ensi- 

 form ovipositor — like the crickets, make their noise by 

 tlie friction of the base of their elytra. And the chirp- 

 ing they thus produce is long, and seldom interrupted, 

 vv^hich distinguishes it from that of the common grass- 

 hoppers (Grj/Uus, F.). What is remarkable, the grass- 



"Nal.Hht.W.TJ. "Ibid. 81. 



