208 MANUAL OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS. 



Among the cursorial tribes of the Orthoptera we 

 find those common pests, the Cockroaches, remark- 

 able for their omnivorous propensities ; one of which, 

 the domestic " Black-Beetle " (Blatta orientalis), is 

 an importation from our Indian possessions of by- 

 no means a satisfactory nature. Here, also, we find 

 the Camel-Crickets or Soothsayers, raptorial insects, 

 so named from their long necks, and the imitative 

 movements of their fore-legs, and which comprise 

 several strange tropical genera, as Empusa, with the 

 top of the head formed into a leaf-like lobe, Eremia-» 

 phila, whose movements are slow, and whose colour 

 resembles that of the sandy plains on which it lives, 

 and Deroplatys, with the legs furnished with mem- 

 branous appendages. In the ambulatorial group, 

 where all the legs are alike, we meet with those 

 phantasms of the insect world, the " Walking- 

 leaves/' and the stick-like Phasma, which seems 

 made up of dead twigs, and some Australian species, 

 which attain the length of more than a foot ; these 

 curious forms move about the branches of low 

 shrubs in a sluggish manner, either, singly or in 

 pairs. In the saltatorial tribes the hind legs are 

 formed for leaping like the Frogs ; indeed, some 

 writers have compared the Orthoptera with the 

 Batrachian-Reptiles, instancing their loud singing 

 noise, their leaps, and even a singular coincidence 



