THE GRASSHOPPER'S COUSINS 



squeaking note resembling shriek with the s much aspi- 

 rated and with a prolonged vibration on the ie. The next 

 evening he played again, making at first a weak swish, 

 swish, swish, with the s very sibilant and the i very vibra- 

 tory. But after giving this as a prelude he began a sh ill 

 shrie-e-e-e-k, shrie-e-e-e-k, repeated six times, a loud 

 sound described by Blatchley as a "creaking squawk — like 

 the noise made by drawing a fine-toothed comb over a 

 taut string." 



The best-known members of the round-headed katydids, 

 and perhaps of the whole family, are the angular-winged 

 katydids (Fig. 23). These are large, maple-leaf green in- 

 sects, much flattened from side to side, with the leaflike 

 wings folded high over the back and abruptly bent on their 

 upper margins, giving the creatures the humpbacked ap- 

 pearance from which they get their name of angular- 

 winged katydids. The sloping surface of the back in front 

 of the hump makes a large flat triangle, plain in the female, 

 but in the male corrugated and roughened by the veins of 

 the musical apparatus. 



There are two species of the angular-winged katydids in 

 the United States, both belonging to the genus Microcen- 

 trum, one distinguished as the larger angular-winged katy- 

 did, M. rhombifolium, and the other as the smaller angu- 

 lar-winged katydid, M. retinerve. The females of the 

 larger species (Fig. 23), which is the more common one, 

 reach a length of 2^8 inches measured to the tips of the 

 wings. They lay flat, oval eggs, stuck in rows overlapping 

 like scales along the surface of some twig or on the edge 

 of a leaf. 



The angular-winged katydids are attracted to lights and 

 may frequently be found on warm summer nights in the 

 shrubbery about the house, or even on the porch and the 

 screen doors. Members of the larger species usually make 

 their presence known by their soft but high-pitched notes 

 resembling tzeet uttered in short series, the first notes re- 

 peated rapidly, the others successively more slowly as the 



[41] 



