LOCUSTS 285 



on the hearth"; also of the field cricket when we 

 remember Gilbert White's words: "Thus the shril- 

 ling of the field cricket, though sharp and stridulous, 

 yet marvellously delights some hearers, filling their 

 minds with a train of summer ideas of everything 

 that is rural, verdurous and joyous." 



Into this question we need not go, but I am con- 

 vinced that there are many insects in this order that 

 delight us with the intrinsic beauty of the sounds 

 they emit. They are few in this country, and owing 

 to their extremely local distribution they are not 

 generally known; the best among them is perhaps 

 the large green grasshopper, Locusta viridissima^ 

 which can have no associations for most of us, yet 

 the silvery shrillness of its sustained notes is pleasing 

 to everyone. This home insect, however, cannot 

 compare in its music with many exotic species. Of 

 those known to me I will mention only one — a leaf- 

 locust of the genus CEcanthus, found throughout 

 North and South America. 



It is a slender, frail-looking insect, all of it, wings 

 included, of a pale, delicate green, the whole body 

 like the wings looking almost semi-transparent. By 

 day it lies concealed in the clustered foliage of trees 

 and sings after dark and appears to be most tuneful 

 on moonlight nights. It has a sustained note, re- 

 peated several times with silent intervals of a second 

 or less; then a longer interval of silence and the 

 strain once more. It is a soft and silvery sound, and 

 differs also from the music of other locusts and crickets 

 in its slowness. For the locust sound is not one, but 



