The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects

The House Cricket is about half an inch long, of an ashy colour,

and is to be met with principally in bakers' shops and country kitchens, where it hides itself during the day in the crevices of the walls or at the back of the fireplaces. It eats flour, and also, perhaps, the little insects which live in flour.

If crickets are put into a box together, they devour each other.

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Fig. 304. — Field Cricket {Grytlus cawpestris).

This does not prove conclusively that they are carnivorous, for there are many species, eating nothing but vegetables, which would destroy each other in a similar case. Some authors say that these insects are always thirsty, for they are often to be found drowned in the vessels containing any kind of liquid. Everything damp is to their taste. It is for this reason that they sometimes make holes in wet clothes, which are hung up before the fire to dry. They inhabit, by preference, houses newly built; for the mortar, being still damp, allows them to hollow out their dwelling-places with greater ease.

The habits of the House Cricket (G?-yI!us domcsticus) are nocturnal, like those of its congener of the fields. It is only at night that it leaves its retreat to seek its food. When it is exposed against its will to the light of day, it appears to be in a state of torpor. This insect reminds one of the owl, among birds, not only from its habit of avoiding the light, but also from its monotonous song, which the vulgar consider, one does not know why, a foreboding of ill-luck

ORTNOPTERA.

to the house in which it is heard. Formerly this singular prejudice was much deeper-rooted than it is at present. The song of the I cricket has merely the object of calling the female. The Wood Cricket {Gryllus ^Nt'inohins\ sylvestris) is much smaller than the above, and is met with in great numbers in the woods, where its leaps sometimes produce the noise of drops of rain.

Fig- 305.— Mole Cricket {Gryllo-tnlpn vvlgaris).

The female crickets have a long egg-layer, or ovipositor, with 'which they deposit their eggs, of which each one lays, towards the middle of the summer, about three hundred, in the cracks and crevices of the soil. The larvae pass the winter in that state, and do not become pupae and perfect insects till the following summer,

Mouffet relates that, in certain regions of Africa, the crickets are objects of commerce. They are brought up in little cages, as we do Canary birds, and sold to the inhabitants, who like to hear their amorous chant. It is said that some tribes eat these insects. In France they are sought after as baits for fishing, and are used also in

menageries for feeding small reptiles. Next to Gryllus come the genera CEcanlhus, insects of the south of Europe, which live on ]jlants, and which one often sees fluttering about flowers; Sphceria, which live in ant-hills; Piaty dactyl a s; and, lastly, the Mole Cricket {Gry/lo-talpa), whose habits deserve attention for a while (Fig. 305).

The Mole Crickets are distinguished from all other insects by the structure of their fore-legs, which are wide and indented, in such a manner as to resemble a hand, analogous to that of the mole. This leg betrays the habits of the cricket much better than our hands betray ours. They make use of them, indeed, as spades, with which they hollow out subterranean galleries, and accumulate at the side of the entrance-hole the rubbish thus drawn out. The French name comes from the old French word courtillc^ which means garden. Such places and vineyards are the favourite haunts of these destructive insects. If the Mole Crickets, or Courfilieres, have spades on their front legs, their hind-legs are very little developed, so that it would be perfecUy impossible for them to jump, particularly as their large abdomen would hinder their so doing. The wings are broad, and fold back in the form of a fan; they make little use of them, and it is only at night-fall that the mole cricket is seen to disport himself, describing curves of no great height in the air. It is found principally in cultivated land, kitchen-gardens, nursery gardens, wheat fields, &c., where it scoops out for itself an oval cavity communicating with the surface by a vertical hole (Fig. 306). On this hole abut numerous horizontal galleries, more or less inclined, which permit the insect to gain its retreat by a great many roads, when pursued.

It i5 easy to understand that an insect which undermines land in this way must cause great damage to cultivation. Whether the crops serve it for food or not, they are not the less destroyed by its underground burrowings. Lands infested by the mole cricket are recognisable bythe colour of the vegetation, which is yellow and withered; and the rubbish which these miners heap up at the side of the openings leading to their galleries, resembling mole-hills in miniature, betrays their presence to the farmer. To destroy them, they pour water or other liquid into their nests, or else they bury, at different distances, vessels filled with water, in which they drown themselves. From the month of April the males betake themselves to the entrance of their burrows, and make their cry of appeal. Their notes are slow, vibrating, and monotonous, repeated for a long time without interruption, and somewhat resemble the cry of the owl or the goatsucker.

ORTHOPTERA,

Vvg. 306.— The nest ot the A](jle Cricket {(rrydo-talpa miif^nris).

The female lays her eggs, to the number of from two to three hundred, m the interior of a sort of chamber scooped out in soil stiff

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29S THE INSECT WORLD.

enough to resist the action of rain. The hatching takes place at the end of a month. It is not till the following spring that the larvae pass into the pupa state, and that the organs of flight begin to be marked out. According to M. Feburier, three years are required for the complete development of the mole cricket, which is a fact that indicates remarkable longevity in these insects. All authors agree, moreover, in extolling the solicitude with which the mole cricket takes care 01 her little ones. She watches over them, and, they say, procures them food. The genus Tridactylus, which bears a great analogy to the mole cricket, is the smallest genus of Orthoptera known; the species are not more than a sixth of an inch in length, and are found in the south of France, on the banks of the Rhone and other rivers, where they disport themselves in sand exposed to the sun. The Tridactyli leap with remarkable agility, even on the surface of the water, for their legs are provided with flat appendages much resembling battledores.

The Grasshoppers and Locusts take much longer leaps than the Crickets, owing to the conformation of their hind-legs, and they often make use of their wings also, which are very fully developed. These insects are unable to walk, on account of the disproportion which exists between their different pairs of legs. The female is provided with a curved ovipositor with two valves, which serves for breaking up the ground for the reception of its eggs. The male produces a sharp stridulation or screeching sound, by rubbing the cases of its wings — which are furnished with plates which might be compared to cymbals — one against another.

The song of the grasshopper, known by everyone, is a monotonous " zic-zic-zic," which can be heard during the day in grassy places. It is on account of this song that the name of Cigale is sometimes given, though wrongly, to the great green grasshopper. As we have already said in speaking of the Cigale, it is the green grasshopper which La Fontaine had in view in his fable of La Cigale et la Fourmi, for all the plates which ornament the ancient editions of the fables of this author represent a grasshopper, and not a Cigale. Grasshoppers are spread over the whole surface of the earth, but are to be met with chiefly in South America, which contains nearly three-fourths of the species known. The European species, on the contrary, are few.

Their habits resemble those of the other herbivorous Orthoptera. They live in meadows, on trees, devouring the leaves and stalks of plants; but they are never found in such great numbers as to cause ciamage at all to be compared to that caused by the locust. They

ORTHOPTERA.

appear in the month of July and disappear at the beginning of the cold weather. Towards the end of summer their song is heard in the meadows and wheat fields. The females, summoned by the males, are not long in coupling and laying their eggs, which do not hatch until the following spring, in the ground. After four months the larvae change into pupae, which already show rudimentary wings, and which by a fifth month pass into the perfect state.

The Great Green Grasshopper [Loaista viridissimd) is very coma's- 307 — Decticus verrucivorus.

mon in Europe. It remains during the day on trees, and in the evening disports itself in the fields.

I'he Decticus verrucivorus (Fig. 307) is a shorter and more thickset species, whose distinctive feature is a very broad head. Its colour is grey of various shades, and it is to be heard singing during the day in fields of ripe wheat. The name comes from the use made of it by the peasants in Sweden and Germany as a cure for warts.

" The peasants," says Charles de Geer, " make these locusts bite the warts which they often have on their hands, and the liquid which at the same time flows from the insect's mouth into the wound causes

the warts to dry up and disappear. It is for this reason they have given them the name of Wart-bit or Wart-biter."

The Phaneroptera and the Copiphores are exotic Locusts. The Ephippigerce are small species whose thorax, which is very convex, resembles a saddle. One often meets in the environs of Paris the Vine Ephippiger {Ephippigera vitium), which is greenish, with four brown stripes on its head. In this species the wing cases, or elytra, are also obsolete, and the wings are reduced to mere arched scales, whose friction produces a stridulation or screeching noise. The females are provided with a similar apparatus, so that they perform duets.*

The genus Gryllacris resembles the crickets. It contains the Anostostomata of New Holland, which are said to be destitute of wings, even in the perfect state.

We arrive now at the redoubtable tribe of Acridium, or Locust, whose fearful ravages are so well known.

These are, among the Orthoptera, the best adapted for jumping. The thigh and the leg, folded together when at rest, are stretched out suddenly under the action of very powerful muscles. The body, resting then on the tarsi and on the flexible spines of the legs, is shot into the air to a great height. They fly very well, but the power of walking and running is denied to them, as it is also to the other Saltatoria. The females have no ovipositor. This peculiarity, and the formation of their antennae, which are very short, distinguish the locusts from the grasshoppers. The males, as we have already said, make a shrill stridulation by rubbing their thighs over their elytra. There is never more than one thigh in motion at a time; the insect using the right and the left by turns. The sound is made stronger by a sort of drum filled with air, and covered with a very thin skin, which is found on each side of the body, at the base of the abdomen. The locust's song is less monotonous than that of the grasshopper. It is capable of much variation; it is a noise just like that of a rattle, but with sounds which vary very much, according to the species.