INSECTS 



cricket, Orocharis saltator (Fig. 42), who comes on the stage 

 late in the season, about the middle of August, or shortly 

 after. His notes are loud, clear, piping chirps with a rising 

 inflection toward the end, suggestive of the notes of a 

 small tree toad, and they at once strike the listener as 



something new and 



different in the insect 

 program. The play- 

 ers, however, are at 

 first very hard to lo- 

 cate, for they do not 

 perform continuously 

 — one note seems to 

 come from here, a 

 second from over 

 there, and a third 

 from a different an- 

 gle, so that it is al- 

 most impossible to 

 place any one of 

 them. But after a 

 week or so the crick- 

 ets become more nu- 

 merous and each 



Fig. 42. The Jumping bush cricket, Orocharis 

 saltator 



Upper figure, a male; lower, a female 



player more persistent till soon their notes are the predomi- 

 nant sounds in the nightly concerts, standing out loud and 

 clear against the whole tree-cricket chorus. As Riley says, 

 this chirp "is so distinctive that when once studied it is 

 never lost amid the louder racket of the katydids and 

 other night choristers." 



After the first of September it is not hard to locate one of 

 the performers, and when discovered with a flashlight, he is 

 found to be a medium-sized, brown, short-legged cricket, 

 built somewhat on the style of Gryllus but smaller (Fig. 

 42). The male, however, while singing raises his wings 

 straight up, after the manner of the tree crickets, and he 

 too, carries a basin of liquid on his back much sought after 



[70] 



