THE GROUSE-LOCUSTS. 185 



ers, in the male, as long as the abdomen, in the female, 

 covering two thirds of the abdomen ; wings rather shorter 

 than the wing-covers, transparent, and faintly tinged with 

 yellow ; hinder knees black ; spines on the hind shanks 

 tipped with black. Length from J to more than T 8 <y inch ; 

 exp. from ^ to nearly 1 inch. 



The flight of the short- winged locust is noiseless and short, 

 but it leaps well. Great numbers of these insects are found 

 in our low meadows, in the perfect state, from the first of 

 August till the middle of October. They are easily distin- 

 guished from other locusts by their short and narrow wings, 

 by the yellow color of the body beneath, and by the yellow 

 legs and black knees. 



III. Tetrix. Grouse-locust. 



The Greeks applied the name of Tetrix to some kind of 

 grouse, probably the heath-cock of Europe, and Latreille 

 adopted it for a genus of locusts in which, perhaps, he fan- 

 cied some resemblance to the bird in question. Linnaeus 

 placed these locusts in a division of his genus Gryllus, which 

 he called Bulla, a name that ought to have been retained for 

 them. The principal distinguishing characters of the genus 

 have already been given, and I will only add that the body is 

 broadest between the middle legs, narrows gradually to a 

 point behind, and very abruptly to the head, which is much 

 smaller than in the other locusts. The wings are large, 

 forming nearly the quadrant of a circle, thin and delicate, 

 and scalloped on the edge ; when not in use they are folded 

 beneath the projecting thorax. The four boring appendages 

 of the females are notched on their edges with fine teeth, like 

 a saw. Latreille and Serville have stated that the antennae 

 consist of only thirteen or fourteen joints ; but some of our 

 native species have twenty-two joints in the antennae. Upon 

 this variation I would arrange those now to be described in 

 two groups. 



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