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Updated: May 11, 2025
This arrangement is the reverse of that exhibited by the green grasshopper, the Decticus, the Ephippigera, and their relations. The Cricket is right-handed, the others left-handed. The two wing-covers have the same structure. To know one is to know the other. Let us examine that on the right hand.
Each crevice of bark, each shadow of a leaf, conceals a hunter armed with a deadly weapon, all his senses on the alert. Everywhere are teeth, fangs, talons, stings, pincers, and scythes. Leaping in the long grasses, the Decticus with the ivory face "crunches the heads of grasshoppers in his mandibles."
If entomology had no other scenes to show us, I should without the least regret turn my back upon my insects. The Life of the Caterpillar: chap. xi. Next day, offer the sated Beetle a Green Grasshopper or a White-faced Decticus, serious adversaries both, armed with powerful lower jaws. With these big-bellied creatures the slaughter will begin anew, as eagerly as on the day before.
I double the cape of the neighbouring hedges and, at a few hundred yards, enter into relations with the Sacred Beetle, the Capricorn, the Geotrupes, the Copris, the Decticus, the Cricket, the Green Grasshopper, in short, with a host of tribes the telling of whose story would exhaust a lifetime.
The female of the white-faced Decticus will eagerly devour the body of her dead mate, as will the Green Grasshopper. To a certain extent this custom is excused by the nature of the insect's diet; the Decticus and the Grasshopper are essentially carnivorous. Encountering a dead body of their own species, a female will devour it, even if it be the body of her latest mate.
Yet with what interest and lucidity has Fabre succeeded in expounding the complex morphoses of the obscure and miserable larva of the Sitaris, the curious intestine of the Scarabaeus, the secret of the spawning of the weevil, and the ingenious mechanisms of the musical instruments of the Decticus and the Cicada.
The Mantis devours the lovers who have played their parts; the mother Decticus willingly nibbles a thigh of her decrepit husband; the merry Crickets, once the eggs are laid in the ground, indulge in tragic domestic quarrels and with not the least compunction slash open one another's bellies. When the cares of the family are finished, the joys of life are finished likewise.
These two spaces represent the mirror of the locust tribe; they constitute the sonorous area. The substance of the wing-cover is finer here than elsewhere, and shows traces of iridescent though somewhat smoky colour. These are parts of an admirable instrument, greatly superior to that of the Decticus.
Here again we have ammonium urate. Treated with nitric acid, the adipose tissue of the Decticus produces an effervescence similar to that of chalk and yields enough murexide to redden a tumblerful of water. A strange adipose body, this bundle of lace crammed with uric acid without a trace of fatty matter!
The Decticus, endowed with only one indifferent "mirror," can be heard only at a few paces; the Cricket, the possessor of four vibratory areas, can be heard at a hundred yards. The Cricket rivals the Cigale in loudness, but his note has not the displeasing, raucous quality of the latter. Better still: he has the gift of expression, for he can sing loud or soft.
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