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THE ZOOLOGIST. 



been introduced into Cornwall ; as ships come to Cardiff from 

 the South of Europe and elsewhere, it probably arrived with 

 foreign produce. A similar species is noticed in Cashmere and 

 Northern India, but its female has a longer ovipositor. Scud- 

 deria curvicauda, found in North America, is mostly heard at 

 night, but it is wont to cheer the day with a subdued " vree ! " 

 The beautiful little Meconema thalassina that seems to be carved 

 out of green ivory, which is often seen on the rose-bush and in 

 the lime-tree avenue in September and October, is unfortunately 

 not musical. 



A Leaf-Cricket (Amblycorypha rotundifolia) , inhabiting trees 

 in North America at the fall of the year, September and October, 

 flies with the " whiz " of a weaver's shuttle. "Like the noise 

 of chariots on the tops of the hills shall they leap," says the 

 prophet Joel, and this squib-like flight is noticeable in many of 

 the grasshopper kind. Leptodermis gracilis, a small brownish 

 inconspicuous kind, with a silvery gloss at its wing-tips, opens 

 its wings with a " burr" as it takes a leap over the sticks and 

 straws among the minute white and purple flowers of Daucus 

 aureus, when the glaring sun in June and July has parched the 

 ground at Jerusalem. The sound is, I think, caused by a raised 

 arched vein at the base of the elytra catching on the prominent 

 veins of the under wings. The larger Psophus stridulus, with 

 brick-red under wing, found in wood-clearings on the mountains 

 of Italy, France, Sweden, and Kussia, and which I have sur- 

 prised in September among the pine-trees on the heights above 

 Montreux, makes quite a rattle when it displays the flaunt of its 

 wing to leap away ; and on the Calais sandhills (Edipoda cerule- 

 scens starts up before the footsteps with a rustling arrowy sound. 

 In Canada the yellow-winged (E. sulphur ea that appears in the 

 autumn makes a loud snapping noise like a watchman's rattle as 

 it flies ; "a spot on the road to Compton at the foot of a hill a 

 little beyond Stafford's Bridge is its beat," remarks an entomolo- 

 gist. The coral-winged locust that frequents dry pastures at the 

 close of April also makes a loud noise in flying. Among the 

 smaller European grasshoppers, Stenobothrus melanopterus, mini- 

 atus, and viridulus, as well as the larger Acyoptera variegata, 

 have been accused of emitting these alarming rattlesnake noises. 



The European grasshoppers of common parlance make their 



