406 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
GRAPE. LEAVES. 
noticed the song of one of these insects proceeding from the same 
spot upon a mass of vines or upon a particular limb of a tree, 
upon each evening for a number of nights in succession. And it 
is quite probable therefore, that the simple structure of their feet 
incapacitates them for clinging and leaping about from one leaf to 
another. 
Some of our most important information respecting the habits 
of the flower cricket we obtain from a Memoir published in 
Italy more than a century ago, by M. Louis Salvi, no subsequent 
writer appearing to have observed the same facts. From him we 
learn that the female with her awl-like ovipositor pierces upon 
their under side the green succulent stalks of the vegetation on 
which she resides, to the very pith, and crowds commonly only a 
pair of eggs into the nest thus formed. A number of these punc¬ 
tures are made near each other, till her whole supply of eggs is 
disposed of. The eggs remain till near the middle of the follow¬ 
ing summer, when they give out the young crickets, which 
resemble their parents in form, except that they are without 
wings. They secrete themselves in the thickest masses of leaves, 
until they get their growth, changing their skin several times. 
In the southern part of our State the song of the flower cricket 
begins to be heard as early as the first of August, but it is a week 
later before it commences in the vicinity of Albany, and later 
still in the more northern parts of the State. Perched among 
the thick foliage of a grape vine or other shrubbery, some feet up 
from the ground, and as already stated, remaining in the same 
spot day after day, its song begins soon after sunset and before 
the duskiness of twilight arrives. It is distinctly heard at a dis¬ 
tance of several rods, and the songster is always farther off than 
is supposed. Though dozens of other crickets and catydids are 
shrilling on every side at the same time, the peculiar note of this 
cricket is at once distinguished from all the rest, consisting of 
repetitions of a single syllable, slowly uttered, in a monotonous 
melancholy tone, with a slight pause between. The children 
regard this cricket as no votary of the temperance cause; they 
understand its song to consist of the words treat — treat — treat 
treat , which words, slowly uttered, do so closely resemble its notes 
that they will at once recall them to the recollection of almost 
