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THE VOCAL AND INSTKUMENTAB MUSIC OF 



INSECTS. 



By A. H. Swinton. 



(Continued from vol. xiii. p. 153.) 



The snowy pinnacles, blue gentians, and baskets of poet's 

 narcissus that young girls bring down from the mountains are 

 the chief charms of Switzerland, but the last have faded when 

 the grasshopper concert begins. Foremost among the violinists 

 comes the largish, yellowish-brown Arcyptera fuscus, chequered 

 red and orange, and having the marginal and central areas of 

 its fore wings, or elytra, dilated and crossed with veins that 

 resemble the cords of a piano. This grasshopper Goureau found 

 in the thickets at Cologne ; I met with it in the crawling state at 

 Montreux early in August, 1892. It was playing its selections 

 at Geneva on the 15th, and hopping about at Chamonix on the 

 28th, when I was admiring the massive of Mont Blanc. It was 

 a warm day when I first heard the loud sound of its violin 

 resounding among the wild roses on the Saleve, and, wearied 

 with the ascent, it was pleasant to recline in the sylvan shade 

 and listen to its refreshing "dree-dree ! " in the long and wiry 

 grass, mellowed by the echo into a croak indistinguishable from 

 that of the frogs and Cicadas ; the females, whose wings do not 

 cover their portly bodies, bustled about as well as they were able, 

 and exposed their ear-cavities to drink in the cooling melody. 

 The smaller Stauroderus scalaris, a brown grasshopper with 

 black knees and black tips to its elytra, also known as morio, 

 inhabits the mountains of Northern and Central Europe. The 

 musical male has the discoidal and scapular areas of its fore 

 wings dilated with cross veins, and its bold notes " tsin-tirra ! " 

 are quite startling in the deep silence of the pine-clad hills that 

 look down on Montreux, Chillon, and the placid lake ; they make 

 you think your watch-chain has snapped. It is the only grass- 

 hopper I know that thrives in confinement ; briskly moving its 



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