304 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



country around Gibraltar, Jaen, and Xeres by Locusts, supposed 

 to have come from Africa. 



The terminal joints of the antennse of a grasshopper are 

 pitted like the carapace of a Crab or Lobster, or the leaves of 

 thyme and rosemary, and these pores no doubt enable it to 

 inhale the manifold fragrance of the herbage, and distinguish 

 what is noxious and what is good for food. About seven of the 

 European grasshoppers have these joints dilated into a flapper, 

 recalling the knobs of a butterfly, and these take their delight 

 on sunny hills. The male of the minute Gomphocerus maculatus, 

 that has piano-string cross-veins on the central cell of its elytra, 

 rattles away like a Canary on hill and dale in Surrey. I have 

 watched it wandering among the tufted gentians and starry 

 yellow-wort on the declivity of Box Hill, perambulating the 

 heathery knolls of Norway where the cloudberries grow, and the 

 desolate lands of Brittany ; on the height above Pallien, near 

 Treves, where there is a panorama of the valley of the Moselle, 

 I found one that was snuff-coloured. The Gomphocerus rufus, 

 which can be only distinguished from the Variable or Common 

 Grasshopper, which its varieties exactly resemble, by the knobs 

 on its antenna, I have met with on Box Hill, near Turin, and 

 at Montreux in September. One would imagine that it and the 

 Variable Grasshopper had a common ancestor. When the male 

 performs it vibrates its legs to and fro twenty-four times, and 

 gives ten strokes before the " thiph-thiph ! " that sounds for five 

 seconds is heard. When soliciting a female it moves its legs to 

 the tune of "wuf-wuf!" As the elytra have not the piano- 

 strings invariably distinct, certain individuals must acquire 

 celebrity for their music, and, finding more readily a partner, 

 generation after generation will celebrate in louder and louder 

 tunes the balmy air of Surrey. The male of Gomphocerus 

 sibiricus, who has his fore tarsi clubbed in order to properly lay 

 hold of a wary female, on the alpine slope sounds out " tray- 

 tray!" You may hear it among the rhododendrons at Pont- 

 resina, on the Dent de Morcles, or Bocher de Naye. 



Certain grasshoppers differ from the preceding in having 

 their thorax less pinched in like those tight stays that the 

 doctors consider so objectionable. The Chorthippus parallelus, 

 small and wiry, with brownish or greenish translucent elytra, 



