24 WAYS OF THE SIX-FOOTED 



cricket are for wooing, I have come to believe that the 

 later songs of the autumn are made for the love of 

 music. Possibly he still plays on for the delectation of 

 his mate, although the time of youth and love have 

 passed by. At all events, after the mating season is 

 gone, you may hear these indefatigable serenaders from 

 the hour when the afternoon shadows in the orchard 

 lengthen until late at night, playing as steadily as if 



they thought music the most important of 



occupations. 



The cricket ear is placed most conven- 

 Fie. 12. Ear iently in the tibia of the front lea;, so that 



of Cricket. "^ . . . 



these msects literally hear with their elbows. 

 Figure 12 shows the ear of a cricket. The katydids and 

 meadow grasshoppers have their ears placed similarly. 



The last but by no means least of our minnesingers 

 is the snowy tree-cricket, the brave little musician of 

 frosty autumn. You will hear him first as you stroll 

 along some country highway that leads past woods and 

 orchard, and loses itself over dreamy hills set in the 

 amethyst haze of September afternoons.^ His music is so 

 much a part of the landscape that you have perhaps 

 never noticed it at all, and certainly you have never 

 seen this shy fiddler. He lives mostly on trees and 

 shrubs and is seldom visible because of his pallid green 



1 See Frontispiece. 



