INSECT MUSICIANS SNODGRASS 



411 



Yet a few of the grasshoppers make sounds that are perhaps music 

 in their own ears. One such is an unpretentious little brown species 

 (fig. 1) about seven-eighths of an inch in length, marked by a large 

 black spot on each side of the saddlelike shield that covers his back 

 between the head and the wings. He has no other name than his 

 scientific one of Chloealtis conspersa, for he is not widely known, 

 since his music is of a very feeble sort. According to Scudder, his 

 only notes resemble tsikk-tsikk-tsikk, repeated 10 or 12 times in about 

 three seconds in the sun, but at a slightly slower rate in the shade. 

 Chloealtis is a fiddler and plays two instruments at once. The fiddles 

 are his front wings and the bows his hind legs. On the inner surface 

 of each hind thigh or femur there is a row of minute teeth (fig. 1, 

 B, a), shown more magnified at C. When the thighs are scraped over 

 the edges of the wings their teeth scrape on a sharp-edged vein indi- 



Fig. 1. — A grasshopper that makes a sound by scraping its toothed hind thigh over a 

 sharp-edged vein (6) on the wing. (Chloealtis conspersa.) A, the male grasshopper 

 (twice natural size), showing stridulating vein (6) of left wing. B, inner surface of 

 right hind thigh, showing row of teeth at a. C, the teeth more enlarged 



cated by b. This produces the tsiJck-sound just mentioned. Such 

 notes contain little music to us, but Scudder says he has seen three 

 males singing to one female at the same time. This female, however, 

 was busy laying her eggs in a near-by stump, and there is no evidence 

 given to show that even she appreciated the efforts of her serenaders. 



Several other little grasshoppers fiddle after the manner of Chloe- 

 altis; but another, Mecostethus gracilis by name (fig. 2), instead of 

 having the rasping points on the legs, has on each fore wing one of 

 the veins (B, /) and its branches provided with many small teeth, 

 shown enlarged at C, upon which it scrapes a sharp ridge on the inner 

 surface of the hind thigh. 



In another group of grasshoppers there are certain species that 

 make a noise as they fly, a crackling sound apparently produced in 

 some way by the wings themselves. One of these, common through 

 the Northern States, is known as the cracker locust, OircoteMix ver- 



