THE GRASSHOPPER'S COUSINS 



suggesting a camel browsing on the leaves of a tree. He 

 sparingly eats leaves of oak and maple supplied to him in 

 his cage, but appears to prefer fresh fruit and grapes, and 

 relishes bread soaked in water. He drinks rather less than 

 most orthopterons. 



When the katydids are singing at night in the woods they 

 appear to be most wary of disturbance, and often the voice 

 of a person approaching or a crackle underfoot is sufficient 

 to quiet a singer far overhead. The male in the cage never 

 utters a note until he has been in darkness and quiet for a 

 considerable time. But when he seems to be assured of 

 solitude he starts his music, a sound of tremendous volume 

 in a room, the tones incredibly harsh and rasping at close 

 range, lacking entirely that melody they acquire with space 

 and distance. It is only by extreme caution that the per- 

 former may be approached while singing, and even then 

 the brief flash of a light is usually enough to silence those 

 stentorian notes. Yet occasionally a glimpse may be had 

 of the musician as he plays, most frequently standing head 

 downward, the body braced rather stiffly on the legs, the 

 front wings only slightly elevated, the tips of the hind 

 wings projecting a little from between them, the abdomen 

 depressed and breathing strongly, the long antennal 

 threads waving about in all directions. Each syllable ap- 

 pears to be produced by a separate series of vibrations 

 made by a rapid shuffling of the wings, the middle one be- 

 ing more hurried and the last more conclusively stressed, 

 thus producing the sound so suggestive of ka-tv-did', ka-ty- 

 did', which is repeated regularly about sixty times a minute 

 on warm nights. Usually at the start, and often for some 

 time, only two notes are uttered, ka-ty, as if the player has 

 difficulty in tailing at once into the full swing of ka-tv-did. 



The structure of the wings and the details of the stridu- 

 lating parts are shown in Figure 26. The wings (A, B) fold 

 vertically against the sides of the body, but their inner 

 basal parts form wide, stiff, horizontal, triangular flaps that 

 overlap, the left on top of the right. A thick, sunken, 



[47] 



