344 
TRANSFORMATIONS OF INSECTS. 
short and wonderfully enlarged, and, as it were, fingered, enable 
them to grub in the earth very effectually. They are the true 
moles of the insect class, and they choose made soils, like those 
of gardens and vineyards, for their dwelling places. They make 
galleries, destroying everything which comes in their way, cutting 
through roots and eating the fine underground twigs as well as 
the worms and the grubs which they come across during their 
excavations. Some authors have asserted that the mole cricket 
is truly carnivorous, but this is a mistake. They will eat worms 
and insects which come in their way, but their nourishment is 
principally of a vegetable character ; and it can be readily 
imagined that they are very destructive. Their excavations con- 
sist of vertical shafts more or less deep, and of long horizontal 
galleries which lead from them ; the insect is, in fact, a regular miner, 
and the female lays its eggs in the remotest part of the mine. 
In the accompanying engraving a mole cricket is seen coming 
out of its shaft, another is in a gallery, a male is flying, and the 
immature insects are crawling over the soil. 
One tribe of the Orthoptera still remains to be noticed, and 
its members are the true locusts, and belong to the Acrididce. 
The Acrididce have short and thick antennae, but they have 
not the same kind of musical apparatus as the tribes already 
described, nor ovipositors ; but if they have not this particular 
musical apparatus they are none the less good musicians — that is 
to say if the stridulous noise they make can be called music. 
They produce it in this manner : there are very prominent ner- 
vures on the elytra, and the thighs of the hind legs are furnished 
with ridges on their internal surface ; the insect rubs the thigh 
sharply against the elytra, and produces on this natural fiddle a 
sharp vibrating sound. We may not admire it, but it is quite 
certain that the lady crickets do, and doubtless they constitute a 
very critical audience. The accompanying engraving exhibits the 
metamorphosis of the locust (Acridium peregrinum). 
The locusts deposit their eggs in the earth, and close them up 
in a kind of tunnel, and the young ones are born without wings, 
which become developed as they grow older. 
Some remarks on the metamorphoses of the Orthoptera will 
be found in the chapter on the Crustacea. 
