CHAPTER VIII. 
MIMICRY AND WARNING COLOURS IN GRASSHOPPERS. 
Tere is in La Plata a large handsome grasshopper 
(Zoniopoda tarsata), the habits of which in its larva 
and imago stages are in strange contrast, like those 
in certain lepidoptera, in which the caterpillars form 
societies and act in concert. The adult has a 
greenish protective colouring, brown and green 
banded thighs, bright red hind wings, seen only 
during flight. It is solitary and excessively shy in 
its habits, living always in concealment among the 
dense foliage near the surface of the ground. The 
young are intensely black, like grasshoppers cut 
out of jet or ebony, and gregarious in habit, living 
in bands of forty or fifty to three or four hundred ; 
and so little shy, that they may sometimes be taken 
up by handfuls before they begin to scatter in 
alarm. Their gregarious habits and blackness—of 
ail hues in nature the most obvious to the sight— 
would alone be enough to make them the most 
conspicuous of insects; but they have still other 
habits which appear as if specially designed to 
bring them more prominently into notice. Thus, 
they all keep so close together at all times as to 
have their bodies actually touching, and when 
