THE CLIMBING CRICKETS. 153 



This is one of the social species, which, associated together 

 in great swarms, and feeding in common, fre- 

 quent our meadows and road-sides, and, so far 

 from avoiding the light of day, seem to be quite 

 as fond of it as others are of darkness. It may 

 be called Acheta vittata,* (Fig. 70,) the striped 

 cricket. 



These kinds of crickets live upon the ground, 

 and among the grass and low herbage ; but there 

 is another kind which inhabits the stems and branches of 

 shrubs and trees, concealing itself during the daytime among 

 the leaves, or in the flowers of these plants. Some Isabella 

 grape-vines, which were trained against one side of my 

 house, were much resorted to by these delicate and noisy 

 little crickets. The males begin to be heard about the 

 middle of August, and do not leave us until after the 

 middle of September. Their shrilling is excessively loud, 

 and is produced, like that of other crickets, by the rubbing of 

 one wing-cover against the other ; but they generally raise 

 their wing-covers much higher than other crickets do while 

 they are playing. These wing-covers, in the males, are also 

 very large, and as long as the wings ; they are exceedingly 

 thin, and perfectly transparent, and have the horizontal 

 portion divided into four unequal parts by three oblique 

 raised lines, two of which are parallel and form an angle with 

 the anterior line. The antennae and legs are both very long 

 and slender, the hinder thighs being much smaller in pro- 

 portion than those of other crickets, and the hindmost feet 

 have four instead of three joints. The two bristle-formed 

 appendages at the end of the body are as long as the piercer, 

 and the latter is only about half the length of the body, while, 

 in the ground-crickets, the piercer is usually as long as 

 the body, or longer. These insects have, therefore, been sep- 

 arated from the other crickets, under the generical name of 

 (Ecanthus, a word which means inhabiting flowers. They 



* It belongs to M. Serville's new genus Nemobius. 

 20 



