394- NOISES OF INSECTS. 



Having never seen a female of that extraordinary 

 animal the mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris), I cannot 

 say what difference obtains in the reticulation of the ely- 

 tra of the two sexes. The male varies in this respect 

 from the other male crickets, for they have no circular 

 area, nor do the nervures run so irregularly; the areolets, 

 however, toward their base are large, with very tense 

 membrane. The base itself also is scarcely at all elevated. 

 Circumstances these, which demonstrate the propriety of 

 considering them distinct from the other crickets. This 

 creature is not however mute. Where they abound they 

 may be heard about the middle of April singing their 

 love-ditty in a low, dull, jarring, uninterrupted note, not 

 unlike that of the goat-sucker (Caprimulgus europ(zus\ 

 but more inward a . I remember once tracing one by its 

 shrilling to the very hole, under a stone, in the bank of 

 my canal, in which it was concealed. 



Another tribe of grasshoppers (Acrida, Pteropliylla, 

 &c. b ) the females of which are distinguished by their 

 long ensiform ovipositor like the crickets, make their 

 noise by the friction of the base of their elytra. And 

 the chirping they thus produce is long, and seldom in- 

 terrupted, which distinguishes it from that of the common 

 grasshoppers (Locusta). What is remarkable, the grass- 

 hopper lark (Sylvia locmtella\ which preys upon them, 

 makes a similar noise. Professor Lichtenstein in the 

 Linncan Transactions has called the attention of natu- 

 ralists to the eye-like area in the right wing of the males 

 of this genus c ; but he seems not to have been aware 

 that De Geer had noticed it before him as a sexual cha- 



a Nat. Hist. ii. 81. b Sec Kirby in Zoo/. Journ. p. iv. 42U . 



c Linn. Trans, iv. 51 . 



