ITS ABUNDANCE AT SELBOKNE 197 



and females together the poor males were kicked and 

 bitten until they died. 



Before visiting Selborne in October, it had seemed 

 to me that hunting for this grasshopper was a most 

 fascinating pursuit. It was very hard to find him 

 by day, and when by chance you caught sight of 

 him, sitting on a green leaf in the sun and looking 

 like a small, very dark-coloured frog with abnormally 

 long hind legs, it was generally in a bramble bush, into 

 which he would vanish when approached too near. 



When at Selborne, one evening I heard one sing- 

 ing among the herbage at the foot of the Hanger, 

 and next morning I found one at the same spot a 

 female, sitting on a gold-red fallen beech leaf, her 

 blackness on the brilliant leaf making her very con- 

 spicuous. A little later, when the wet weather im- 

 proved, I found the grasshopper all about the village, 

 and even in it; but it was most abundant near the 

 Well Head and in the hedges between Selborne and 

 Nore Hill. Here on a sunny morning I could find a 

 score or more of them, and at dark they could be 

 heard in numbers chirping in all the hedges. 



