THE LOCUSTS. 165 



3. LOCUSTS. (Locustadce.') 



The various insects included under the name of locusts 

 nearly all agree in having their whig-covers rather long and 

 narrow, and placed obliquely along the sides of the body, 

 meeting, and even overlapping for a short distance, at their 

 upper edges, which together form a ridge on the back like a 

 sloping roof. Their antennae are much shorter than those of 

 most grasshoppers, and do not taper towards the end, but are 

 nearly of equal thickness at both extremities. Their feet 

 have really only three joints ; but as the under side of the 

 first joint is marked by one or two cross lines, the feet, when 

 seen only from below, seem to be four or five jointed. The 

 females have not a long projecting piercer, like the crickets 

 and grasshoppers, but the extremity of their body is provided 

 with four short, wedge-like pieces, placed in pairs above and 

 below, and opening and shutting opposite to each other, thus 

 forming an instrument like a pair of nippers, only with four 

 short blades instead of two. When one of these insects is 

 about to lay her eggs, she drives these little wedges into the 

 earth ; these, being then opened and withdrawn, enlarge the 

 orifice ; upon which the insect inserts them again, and drives 

 them down deeper than before, and repeats the operation 

 above described until she has formed a perforation large and 

 deep enough to admit nearly the whole of her abdomen. 



The males, though capable of producing sounds, have not 

 the cymbals and tabors of the crickets and grasshoppers ; 

 their instruments may rather be likened to violins, their hind 

 legs being the bows, and the projecting veins of their wing- 

 covers the strings. But besides these, they have on each 

 side of the body, in the first segment of the abdomen, just 

 above and a little behind the thighs, a deep cavity, closed by 

 a thin piece of skin stretched tightly across it. These proba- 



the middle. The hindmost thighs have a double row of strong spines beneath, and 

 the piercer is straight and only about six tenths of an inch long. This insect may 

 be called Conocephalus uncinatus, from the hook on the tip of the head. 



