VOCAL <6 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF INSECTS. 149 



I saw a large Leaf-Cricket come out from a cavity in the earth, 

 where it had lain among the potsherds. I took it to my 

 lodgings, but while I had it in captivity it could, but, like the 

 children of Zion by the rivers of Babel, would not sing. When 

 Herr Brunner was asked its name he could only say that he had 

 specimens of both sexes, and that it was intermediate between 

 the genus Thamnotrizon and the genus Paradrymadusa, a new 

 link in being's endless chain. 



Yersin says that the portly brown Orphania denticauda, with 

 greenish elytra, sounds out in glee " zeea-zeea ! " when it peram- 

 bulates in the sunshine the grassy slopes of the Vaudois Alps, 

 where the cow-bells tinkle. The tiny Leptophyes punctatissima, 

 green with black specks, is found in Central and Southern 

 Europe. When the leaves commence to fall from the old chest- 

 nuts I have often, during a stroll in Kensington Gardens, 

 noticed the males climbing up the tree-trunks, but, although 

 they have the neatest little raised comb imaginable on their left 

 elytron and a glassy resonant patch on the right, I could never 

 induce them to strike up their fairy music such as the frequenters 

 of the Albert Hall never dreamt of. Their enormous, portly female 

 I did not happen to see until a day or two ago, when I sat down 

 to write their family history. I then beheld her sitting like a 

 speckled gooseberry on my window-sill at Totnes. I at once 

 placed her in a glass jar, when with a grace and an action she 

 condescended to eat a hole in a rose-shoot, using her palpi as 

 chopsticks, and afterwards she delighted to bask in the sunshine 

 of the heat-wave that ushered in October, remarkable for its 

 clustered apples and acorns, sitting head downwards with legs 

 akimbo, and turning towards me her eyelets red, like sealing- 

 wax that took a golden gleam. Clean paws seemed with her a 

 maxim, for she periodically licked them in the manner of a cat. 

 Now, at the end of October, she is still alive. 



Phaneroptera falcata, whose under wings project like tails 

 from under its mossy haricot-green elytra, lurks like a robber 

 among soft foliage of the acacia that overshadows the porch of 

 the wayside inn among the vineyards, where from time to time 

 it indulges in a low thrilling chirp, as the matron sips her 

 cherry-brandy and a thimbleful of gin goes round. I have seen 

 it near Turin and Geneva in July, and by some chance it has 



