24 



THE ZOOLOGIST. 



seen the Great Green Grasshopper use its wings in England, but 

 when taking a stroll at Goschenen, in the St. Gothard Pass, I 

 once watched one winging high overhead in the direction of a 

 willowed brook. The male of the Phasgonura caudata of Eastern 

 Europe, whose female is known by its longer ovipositor, is said 

 to make less noise ; it may be heard at Saarbruck, in Germany, 

 where the Franco-German war commenced. When the rose 

 hues dye the snowy summit of the Dent du Midi is the time to 

 leave the gastronomy of sweet Clarens and ascend to the 

 blackberry-gorge at Les Avants, where the music of the males 

 of P. cantans is to be heard; their short spoon-shaped elytra 

 distinguish them from those of the former species, and this 

 seems the natural result of their sluggish and indolent ways. 

 The violin playing of these slovenly Leaf-Crickets will appear 

 sedative after the clatter of plates and dishes, for it resembles 

 the drowsy song of the Greenfinch and snore of the sleeper ; as 

 you approach the grass seems to snore all around, and Nature 

 becomes breathless as we grow when feeling most. On coming 

 nearer the notes rattle away like the agates of a bracelet or a 

 rain of diamonds, but the music is abrupt without the piercing 

 shrill of the narrow, long- winged virridissima ; unlike it, too, 

 the males seek no concealment, and at the end of August and 

 during September you may see them perambulating the upper 

 surface of the leaves, where the female is wandering in the her- 

 bage below lost in wonderment. The habits are those of a 

 Spider ; she will seize on a Grasshopper when she sees it, bite 

 off its legs, and, taking it gingerly by the head, slowly suck out 

 its pulsating life until death arrives, as it came to Seneca the 

 philosopher. 



The green, fish-like Conocephalus mandibularis* with a pencil- 

 point to its head, abounds among the rank grass on the banks of 

 the Po in August, where I met a man with a tin-can catching 

 prime specimens as food for his Canary. It is also found at 

 Agno, on Lake Lugano ; at Mendrisio, on the banks of the 

 Bhone below Geneva; and at Haguenin, on the Lake of Zurich. 

 On Aug. 21st, 1878, I heard the male commence its whistle — a 

 shrill and lively "vree!" — at eight in the evening, and its 

 overtures sounded out from one to five minutes, with corre- 



* = Conocejrfialoides nitidulus, Scop. (Kirby, Syn. Cat. Orthopt. vol. ii.). 



