THE LOCUSTS. 
165 
3. Locusts. ( [Locustadce .) 
The various insects included under the name of locusts 
nearly all agree in having their wing-covers rather long and 
narrow, and placed obliquely along the sides of the body, 
meeting, and even overlapping for a short distance, at their 
upper edges, which together form a ridge on the back like a 
sloping roof. Their antennae are much shorter than those of 
most grasshoppers, and do not taper towards the end, but are 
nearly of equal thickness at both extremities. Their feet 
have really only three joints ; but as the under side of the 
first joint is marked by one or two cross lines, the feet, when 
seen only from below, seem to be four or five jointed. The 
females have not a long projecting piercer, like the crickets 
and grasshoppers, but the extremity of their body is provided 
with four short, wedge-like pieces, placed in pairs above and 
below, and opening and shutting opposite to each other, thus 
forming an instrument like a pair of nippers, only with four 
short blades instead of two. When one of these insects is 
about to lay her eggs, she drives these little wedges into the 
earth ; these, being then opened and withdrawn, enlarge the 
orifice ; upon which the insect inserts them again, and drives 
them down deeper than before, and repeats the operation 
above described until she has formed a perforation large and 
deep enough to admit nearly the whole of her abdomen. 
The males, though capable of producing sounds, have not 
the cymbals and tabors of the crickets and grasshoppers ; 
their instruments may rather be likened to violins, their hind 
legs being the bows, and the projecting veins of their wing- 
covers the strings. But besides these, they have on each 
side of the body, in the first segment of the abdomen, just 
above and a little behind the thighs, a deep cavity, closed by 
a thin piece of skin stretched tightly across it. These proba- 
tlie middle. The hindmost thighs have a double row of strong spines beneath, and 
the piercer is straight and only about six tenths of an inch long. This insect may 
be called Conocephalus uncinati/s, from the hook on the tip of the head. 
