512 



LOCUST. 



which almost depopulate whole districts of country. 

 When locusts thus make tlieir appearance, they are 

 said to have a leader, whose flight they observe, and 

 to whose motions they pay a strict regard. We are 

 told that nearly ns much damage is occasioned by 

 what they touch, as by what they devour. Their 

 bite is thought to contaminate the plants, and either 

 to destroy or greatly weaken their vegetation. Of 

 the innumerable multitudes in which they occur, 

 scarcely an adequate conception can be formed. 

 Barrow (Travels, &c.) states that, in Southern Africa, 

 the whole surface of the ground might literally be 

 said to be covered with them for an area of 2000 

 square miles. The water of a very wide river was 

 scarcely visible on account of the dead carcasses that 

 floated on the surface. When the larvae (for these 

 are much more voracious than the perfect insects) 

 are on a march during the day, it is utterly impos- 

 sible to turn the direction of the troop, which is gen- 

 erally with the wind. In some parts of the world, 

 these insects are used for food. For this purpose, 

 they are caught in nets, and, when a sufficient num- 

 ber is procured, they are roasted over a slow fire, in 

 an earthen vessel, till the wings and legs drop off; 

 when thus prepared, they are said to taste like craw- 

 fish. Mr Adanson (Voyage to Senegal) says, how- 

 ever, that he would willingly resign whole armies of 

 locusts for the meanest fish. The locusts constituted 

 a common food among the Jews, and Moses has spe- 

 cified the different kinds which they were permitted 

 to eat. " Even these thou mayest eat ; the locust 

 after his kind ; the bald locust after his kind ; the 

 beetle after his kind ; and the grasshopper after his 

 kind." Levit. xi. 22. 



The popular term grasshopper is also applied, and 

 with more propriety, to insects in another group of 

 the grylli the tettigoniee of Linnasus (locusta of Fa- 

 bricius). They are distinguished from the locusts of 

 the preceding section, by their very long, bristle- 

 shaped, or tapering antenna, and by having four 

 joints to their feet, and an exserted oviduct. The 

 latter instrument often has the form of a curved 

 sword or sickle, and is used in preparing a hole, and 

 in conveying the eggs to their appropriate nidus 

 beneath the soil. These insects have long, slender 

 hind legs, formed for leaping ; but the males do not 

 play with them against their wing-cases, for the pro- 

 duction of sounds. Their musical organs consist of 

 a pair of frames, within each of which is stretched a 

 transparent membrane. These tabourets are affixed 

 to that part of the base of each wing-case which laps 

 on the top of the back, and one lies directly over and 

 in contact with the other ; so that, whenever the 

 wing-cases are opened and shut, the frames grate 

 together, and, as often as the shuffling motion is 

 repeated, a grating sound is produced. These musi- 

 cal grasshoppers are usually of a green colour, and 

 are nocturnal in their habits. During the daytime, 

 they conceal themselves in the grass or the foliage of 

 trees ; but at night, they quit their lurking places, 

 and the joyous male commences the song of love with 

 which he recreates his silent partner. It would be 

 well to restrict the popular appellation grasshoppers 

 to these insects, which have been distributed into 

 several modern genera. Two only need here be 

 mentioned, viz., conocephalas (Thunberg), (acrida, 

 Kirby), including the species whose head terminates 

 in front in a conical projection, and ptcrophylla 

 (Kirby), whose head is obtuse, and not produced in 

 front. The latter genus contains the well-known 

 insect, called, from its note, katy-did, pterophylla 

 concava (locusta concava, Say.) Its large, oblong- 

 oval, concave wing-cases, inwrap the abdomen, and 

 meet at their edges above and below, somewhat like 

 the two sides or valves of a pea-pod. Perched on 



the topmost twig of a tree, the insect begins his noc- 

 turnal call by separating, closing, and re-opening his 

 wing-cases. The friction of the tabouret-frames upon 

 each other, thrice, produces three distinct notes, 

 which is the iiMiul number ; occasionally, only tsvo 

 are given, when the wing-cases are merely opened 

 anil shut once. The mechanism of these organs 

 revel-berates, and increases the sound to such a degree, 

 that it may be heard, in the stillness of the night, at 

 the distance of nearly a quarter of a mile. At inter- 

 vals of three or four minutes, he repeats his obstre- 

 perous babble, while rival songsters echo the notes, 

 and the woods resound with the call of kitty- did, she 

 did, the live-long night. The tettigonia of Linna-us, 

 or grasshoppers above-mentioned, are not to be con- 

 founded with the insects referred to the modern genus 

 tettigonia of Olivier, Lamarck, and Latreille. The 

 former, with all the grylli of Linnaeus, have jasvs for 

 masticating their food, and belong to the order ort/io- 

 ptera ; while the latter, with the cicada, or harvest-fly 

 (misnamed locust), have suctorious tubes, for punc- 

 turing plants and imbibing their juices, and belong 

 to the order omoptera. In the genus cicada, the an- 

 tennae are six-jointed ; there are three ocelli, and the 

 legs are not adapted for. leaping. In tettigonia, the 

 antennas are three-jointed ; there are only two ocelli, 

 the thorax is transverse, not produced behind, and 

 the legs are formed for leaping. To the genus tetti- 

 gonia (Olivier) may be referred the minute insect 

 which attacks the grape vine, and injures it to a great 

 extent by noxious punctures, and the exhaustion of 

 its sap. When the leaves of this valuable plant are 

 agitated, the little tettigoniee leap or fly from them in 

 swarms. The infested leaves soon become yellow, 

 sickly, and, losing their vitality, give to the plant, in 

 midsummer, the aspect it assumes, naturally, at the 

 approach of winter. On turning up the leaves cau- 

 tiously, the insects will be seen busily employed upon 

 the under side, with their proboscis thrust into the 

 tender epidermis. These insects pass through all 

 their metamorphoses, which are imperfect, upon the 

 plant ; the wingless larva? and pupaj, having a gene- 

 ral resemblance to the perfect insect, feed together 

 in the same manner, and their innumerable white cast 

 skins will be found adhering to every part of the 

 leaves. This species survives the winter in the per- 

 fect state, hybernating beneath sticks, stones, and 

 among the roots of grass. It may be called tettigonia 

 vitis (Barris.) It is, in its perfect state, nearly one 

 tenth of an inch long ; of a straw colour, with two 

 broad, scarlet bands across the wing-cases, one at the 

 base and the other on the middle, and the tips of the 

 wing-cases are blackish. The cicada tettigonia 

 (Fab.), popularly misnamed locust, and found in vari- 

 ous parts of the world, subsists on the leaves of trees 

 and other vegetable substances. These insects are 

 furnished with a hard proboscis, capable of boring- 

 wood. They are well known from the peculiar noise 

 made by the males. The instruments for this are 

 situated on each side of the base of the abdomen, and 

 each is covered by a kind of cartilaginous lamina. 

 The cavity which contains these is divided by a tri- 

 angular partition. Examined from its internal side, 

 each cell presents, anteriorly, a white and plated 

 membrane, and below this, a tense, thin, transparent 

 lamina, termed, by Reaumur, the mirror. Viewed 

 from the external side, there will be seen another 

 plaited membrane on each side, which is acted on by 

 a powerful muscle, composed of a great number of 

 straight and parallel fibres; this membrane is the 

 drum. The muscles, in rapidly contracting and 

 relaxing, act on this drum, and thus produce the 

 noise. It is said, that in some species, in tropical 

 climates, this is very powerful. Mr Smeathniiui 

 speaks of some of these insects, whose notes can be 



