410 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 
GRAPE. LEAVES. 
with which it is furnished grating thereon will cause such a jar 
in the sash or frame work of both wing covers as will impart a 
brisk vibration to all the little tabrets or membranous cells which 
are placed in this frame work. And the shrillness of the note of 
this insect is due to the extreme thinness of the membranes and 
the violent vibrations into which they are thrown by the sharp 
grating which these projecting teeth of the fiddle-bow with the 
little intervals between them produce. As the teeth incline 
inwards they act only when the wing covers are shutting together; 
when they are opening apart no grating can occur. It hence 
results from this peculiar mechanism that as the wing covers 
are successively opened and closed, notes and intervals of about 
equal length are alternately produced. The row of teeth more¬ 
over being so short, they can cause a vibration of only a moment’s 
duration, and it is not in the power of the insect to produce a 
continuous sound ora prolonged note. The reason of the several 
differences between the song of this and of the common cricket, 
whose stridulation has been described with so much exactness by 
M. Goureau (Annals Soc. Ent. vol. vi, p. 34) are all -readily 
explained by the differences which we find in the structure of the 
wing covers in these two insects. In the common crickets both of 
Europe and of this country, the fiddle-bow instead of projecting teeth 
is merely furnished with elevated transverse ridges or ribs, 
and these occupy its whole length. Hence its note is more pro¬ 
longed and far less loud and shrill than that of the flower cricket. 
M. Goureau was able in the dead insect to so move its wing covers 
whilst they were still pliant, as to produce the same sound which 
it utters when alive; and by merely scratching with a pin upon 
the fiddle-bow he found this sound was produced, though more 
feeble, as but one wing cover was hereby vibrated. 
The White flower cricket measures about 0 50 to the tip of its abdomen 
and its total length is about 0.70. It is of a milk-white color, sometimes with 
a slight tinge of green. The tips of its feelers and of its feet arc tawny yel¬ 
lowish and there is commonly a spot of the same color upon the top of its 
head, which is oblong and broader at its hind part, commencing between the 
bases of the antenna; and extending back to a line with the bind side of the 
eyes. The eyes in the living insect are of the same white color with the body, 
but after death change to a brownish clay color, though in some specimens 
they remain white. Upon the under side of each of the two first joints of tho 
antenna is a black dot, which is sometimes lengthened into a slender stripe or 
