ORTHOPTERA OF NOVA SCOTIA. — PIERS. 285 



"Snapper" are both general in the western counties. It also 

 sometimes flies with a rustling or fluttering sound. When 

 on the ground it is difficult to detect, as its colour harmonizes 

 well with that of its surroundings, but on the wing it at 

 once proclaims itself by its note and the distribution of the 

 yellow on its brightly coloured wings. Its flight is often in 

 a zig-zag course. It docs not always wait to be flushed, 

 but is in the habit of taking short flights over its location, 

 cracking as it goes, in pure exuberance of spirits. 



I must say I have not much fondness for such a dusty, 

 dirty-looking frequenter of hot, dry highways and other 

 parched and stony places in the full glare of the sun. He 

 delights in such dusty and arid spots, as well as the oily- 

 smelling ballast of breezeless railway cuttings; and the 

 hotter and more sweltering the day, the better he is pleased, 

 the more active he becomes, and the quicker, louder, sharper 

 and more gleefully he cracks his wings, like a man snapping 

 his fingers derisively at the world which disagrees with him. 

 With the ear-piercing note of the Cicada, and in a lesser 

 degree the monotonous preaching of the Red-eyed Vireo 

 from the tree-tops, he is an audible accompaniment and a 

 very symbol of a stiffling noon in the hottest and calmest 

 of the dog-days. At such times one is apt to wonder if there 

 is any region which this insect could find too warm, or what 

 sort of after-punishment, except that of Dante's frozen Lake 

 of Cocytus, would strike salutary terror into evil-doers 

 among these orthopteran knights of the road! Only when 

 he rises from earth,' do we catch glimpses of the hidden gold 

 in his sombre make-up. 



Subfamily Locustinae (Spine-breasted Locusts). 

 (AcridincB of former writers). 



Size variable; prosteimum with a prominent conical spine 

 or tubercle between the front pair of legs; pronotum not extend- 

 ing over the abdomen, its disk without tubercles or wrinkles, 



