INSECT MUSICIANS SNODGBASS 



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as among higher animals, and a good instrument becomes, in this 

 light, most important to the individual and to the species. The best 

 player wins his coveted love, while the feeble and the cripples stand 

 no chance to impair the vigor of the race." All such ideas need 

 to be substantiated by more facts than are at hand at present on 

 this interesting subject. 



THE CONEHEADS 



This group of the katydid family contains slender, grasshopper- 

 like insects that have the forehead produced into a large cone and 

 the face strongly receding, but which also possess long slender an- 

 tennae that distinguish them from the true or shorthorn grasshop- 

 pers. They constitute the subfamily Copiphorinaa. 



Fig. 13. 



-A conehead grasshopper {Neoconocephalus retusus). Upper, a male; lower, a 

 female, with extremely long ovipositor 



One of the commonest and most widely distributed of the larger 

 coneheads is the species known as N eoconoceplwlus ensiger, or the 

 sword-bearing conehead. It is the female, however, that carries the 

 sword; and it is not a sword either, but merely the immensely long 

 egg-laying instrument properly called the ovipositor. The female 

 conehead shown at B of Figure 13 has a similar organ, though she 

 belongs to a species called retusus. The two species are very similar 

 in all respects except for slight differences in the shape of the cone on 

 the head. They look like slim, sharp-headed grasshoppers, iy 2 to 

 1% inches in length, usually bright green in color, though some- 

 times brown. 



The song of ensiger sounds like the noise of a miniature sewing 

 machine, consisting merely of a long series of one note, tick, tick, 



