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This inconceivable banquet must be imported, one would think, from another planet, so far removed is it from earthly habits. What a singular race are the Locustidae, one of the oldest in the animal kingdom on dry land and, like the Scolopendra and the Cephalopod, acting as a belated representative of the manners of antiquity!
In the month of June my treasures are installed, in a sufficient number of couples, under a wire cover standing on a bed of sand in an earthen pan. It is indeed a magnificent insect, pale-green all over, with two whitish stripes running down its sides. Its imposing size, its slim proportions and its great gauze wings make it the most elegant of our Locustidae. I am enraptured with my captives.
In the Locustidae the same members have a sloping position on each side of the body, and do not overlap, except to a small extent near their bases; it is out of this small portion that the stridulating organ is contrived. Greater resonance is given in most species by a thin transparent plate, covered by a membrane, in the centre of the overlapping lobes.
'Transactions, Entomological Society, 3rd series, vol. ii. This naturalist has lately found a fossil insect in the Devonian formation of New Brunswick, which is furnished with "the well-known tympanum or stridulating apparatus of the male Locustidae."
Fed on Locustidae, a diet unknown to its race, the larva passes through its several stages without any more difficulty than its brothers and sisters fed on Flies. I obtained the same success in offering young Mantes for food. One of the larvae thus served would even incline me to believe that it preferred the new dish to the traditional diet of its race.
Lobivanellus, wing-spurs in. Local influences, effect of, upon stature. Lockwood, Mr., on the development of Hippocampus. Lockwood, Rev. S., musical mouse. Locust, bright-coloured, rejected by lizards and birds. Locust, migratory; selection by female. Locustidae, stridulation of the; descent of the. Locusts, proportion of sexes in; stridulation of.
3 AUGUST. Next day I find the Phaneroptera devoured. Nothing remains but the dry integuments, which are not dismembered. The entire contents have disappeared; the game has been emptied through a large opening made in the belly. A regular Grasshopper-eater could not have operated more skilfully. I replace the worthless carcase by two small Locustidae.
Douglas informs me that there are three British species, in which the male is black or marked with black bands, whilst the females are pale-coloured or obscure. The males in the three saltatorial families in this Order are remarkable for their musical powers, namely the Achetidae or crickets, the Locustidae for which there is no equivalent English name, and the Acridiidae or grasshoppers.
Hence we may infer with confidence that the Locustidae are descended from a form, in which, as in the existing Achetidae, both wing-covers had serrated nervures on the under surface, and could be indifferently used as the bow; but that in the Locustidae the two wing-covers gradually became differentiated and perfected, on the principle of the division of labour, the one to act exclusively as the bow, and the other as the fiddle.
My Locustidae are not victims at the same time living and inert, operated upon according to the delicate method of the insects that paralyse their prey; they are corpses, procured by a brutal crushing of the head. With the temperature now prevailing, flesh soon becomes tainted; and this compels me frequently to renew the provisions in my sardine-box refectory. Two specimens are served up.
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