( 145 ) 



THE VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF 



INSECTS. 



By A. H. Swinton. 



(Continued from p. 25.) 



The females of other Leaf-Crickets have ovipositors shaped 

 like scimitars. When the National (Natural History) Collection 

 was at Bloomsbury, Mr. Frederick Smith used to say that the 

 Tettigonia* verrucivora, known in Sweden as the " Wart-Biter," 

 and a common insect in Europe and Northern Asia, was to be 

 found among the sea-buckthorns on the Deal sandhills ; on an 

 unusually clear day, when the cliffs of Dover could be seen, I 

 have sat down at Sangatte, on the opposite coast of France, 

 and, as the warm sun climbed upward to the meridian, listened 

 to their dizzy murmur. The music of the males began with 

 a few chirping " screets ! " or " sweets !" which quickly ran into 

 a harsh sound of knife sharpening that rang like a cadence of 

 little bells over the fields of barley gay with the poppies and 

 bluebottles that the young ladies of Calais were wont to work in 

 embroidery, and shimmering in sunshine. Pleasant reveries 

 awoke such as stir when a pleasure steamer about to start dis- 

 gorges a cloud of whistling steam, and the females came and 

 gathered round me entranced on the hem of juicy clover ; when 

 a male left the eager choir and came to pay his attentions, another 

 was seen wandering about, displaying the excellence of his in- 

 strumentation. Presently two males began to perform in rivalry, 

 in the manner of the peasants of Theocritus and Virgil, and, as 

 they emulated the Christy Minstrels, the idyll proved to be 

 within the compass of a little Stenobothrus, who struck up his 

 own romantic tune. No doubt the apparel of the female was an 

 attraction ; when the Wart-Biters first appeared in the second 

 week of July they were grassy green, with invisible spots on 

 their elytra, but the sun soon bleached their verdant hue and 

 developed the brown chessboard pattern of a Scotch tartan. In 



* Tettigonia = Decticus, auctt. 



