4D2 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 
under side of the body of the female). ‘The abdomen is short, and 
somewhat triangular (jig. 114.6. under side of abdomen of male); 
the legs are short, the anterior femora thickened and toothed beneath 
(jig. 114. 5.); the posterior tibia slightly spined, without terminal 
spurs. ‘The tarsi, except in a few species of Cicade *, are 3-jointed ; 
the fore wings are large and rather narrow, deflexed at the sides of 
the body, and of an uniform consistence, with comparatively few and 
very distinct nervures, except in Hemidictya frondosa Burm., and 
Polyneura ducalis Westw. (a beautiful insect brought from India by 
General Hardwicke), in which they are thickly reticulated. In a 
few species, C. stridula Zinn. &c., the base of the forewings exhibits a 
decided space, somewhat more coriaceous than the rest of the wings ; 
but, in the majority, they are completely membranous and delicately 
transparent. 
The structure of the legs does not permit these insects to leap ; 
but the more peculiar characteristic of the group consists in the 
structure of the apparatus, whereby the males are enabled to execute 
the long-continued and monotonous music, for which they have been 
so long famed; these organs are internal, and are placed at the base 
of the abdomen beneath, and covered by two large flat plates at- 
tached behind the place of insertion of the hind legs, varying in 
form in the different species +, being, in fact, the dilated sides of the 
metasternum (jig. 114. 6.bg.7.b 2). The peculiar construction of 
the internal double apparatus -has been carefully investigated by 
Réaumur (Mémoires, tom.v.), and more recently by Goureau and Solier 
(Annales Soc. Ent. de France, 1837, and also in the Crochard edition of 
the Regne Animal; Ins. p|. 95.), and which consists of a pair of stretched 
membranes, acted upon by powerful muscles. The sound issues out of 
the two holes beneath the above-mentioned plates, in a manner some- 
what analogous to the action ofa violm. (See also Latreille’s dis- 
sertation on musical insects, in the Mémoires du Muséum, tom. viii. ) 
The song of the Cicada has been a favourite theme in the verses 
* The species with 2-jointed tarsi form Latreille’s genus Tibicen, C. plebeia, 
tympanum, mannifera, &c. 
+ The chirping varies considerably in different species, probably according to the size 
of the drums. Captain Hancock states that some sing so loud as to be heard to the 
distance ofa mile. The song of a Surinam species somuch resembles the sound of a lyre 
that the species is thence called the harper (Lierman).—Merian, Surin. p. 49. The 
Chinese, as well as the Greeks, kept these insects in cages for the sake of their song. 
