The Life of the Grasshopper 



three or four times repeated and spaced with 

 pauses, he sings his ditty. He scrapes his 

 sides with his great hind-legs, using now one, 

 now the other, anon both at a time. 



The result is very poor, so slight indeed 

 that I am obliged to have recourse to little 

 Paul's ear in order to make sure that there 

 is a sound at all. Such as it is, it resembles 

 the creaking of the point of a needle pushed 

 across a sheet of paper. There you have the 

 whole song, so near akin to silence. 



There is nothing more to be expected from 

 so rudimentary an instrument. We have no- 

 thing here similar to what the Grasshopper 

 clan have shown us: no toothed bow, no 

 vibrating membrane stretched into a drum. 

 Let us, for instance, take a look at the 

 Italian Locust (Caloptenus italicus, LIN.), 

 whose apparatus of sound is repeated in the 

 other stridulating Acridians. His hinder 

 thighs are keel-shaped above and below. 

 Each surface, moreover, has two powerful 

 longitudinal nervures. Between these main 

 parts there is, in either case, a graduated 

 row of smaller, chevron-shaped nervures; 

 and the whole thing is as prominent and as 

 plainly marked on this outer side as on the 

 inner one. And what surprises me even 

 370 



