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Updated: May 4, 2025
The crickets accompanied the narrator's voice with the shrilling of their wing-cases, and ever and anon his words, uttered in the softest of all dialects of human speech, would be answered by the fluted plaintive croaking of the frogs, which hearkened from across the road a friendly, if apprehensive audience.
The Silphæ, with wing-cases wide and dark, as though in mourning, flee distraught, hiding in the cracks in the soil; the Saprini, of polished ebony which mirrors the sunlight, jog hastily off, deserting their workshop; the Dermestes, of whom one wears a fawn-coloured tippet flecked with white, seek to fly away, but, tipsy with the putrid nectar, tumble over and reveal the immaculate whiteness of their bellies, which forms a violent contrast with the gloom of the rest of their attire.
The male, on his side, is fully transformed, changes his shape, acquires wings and wing-cases; nevertheless, like the female, he possesses, from the time when he is hatched, the pale lamp of the end segment. This luminous aspect of the stern is characteristic of the entire Glow-worm tribe, independently of sex and season. It appears upon the budding grub and continues throughout life unchanged.
It includes the largest of our Beetles, the common Rhinoceros Beetle, or Oryctes nasicornis. I find some who have been recently liberated, whose wing-cases, of a glossy brown, now see the sunlight for the first time; I find others enclosed in their earthen shell, almost as big as a Turkey's egg. More frequent is her powerful larva, with its heavy paunch, bent into a hook.
He was vibrating his horny wing-cases with marvellous rapidity, producing such an amount of noise that, unless one had seen it in process of production, it would have seemed impossible that it could arise from such a humble source.
The muck-raker would do honour to the jeweller's show-cases. For the rest, our own Dung-beetles, though usually modest in their attire, also have a leaning toward luxurious ornament. One Onthophagus decorates his corselet with Florentine bronze; another wears garnets on his wing-cases.
Meanwhile, the beloved makes herself small, opening her wing-cases slightly, hiding her head and tucking her abdomen under her, as though to escape the erotic thunderstorm that is bursting upon her back. But the paroxysm calms down.
"When we first came here" remarked Tom, "mother could not sleep for the noise they and the tree-toads made." "The voice of the tree-toad is very loud for so small a creature, but the katydid has really no voice at all." "No voice, uncle?" "No, Annie; the chirp of all kinds of grasshoppers is produced by their thighs rubbing against their wing-cases."
A few weeks elapse, during which the nymph partly dons the livery of the adult state; and, in about a month, the insect moults for a last time, in the usual manner, in order to attain its final form. The wing-cases are now of a uniform yellowish white, as are the wings, the abdomen and the greater part of the legs; very nearly all the rest of the body is of a glossy black.
The music in the males of the Acridiidae is produced by the scraping of the long hind thighs against the horny nervures of the outer edges of the wing-cases; a drum- shaped organ placed in a cavity near the insertion of the thighs being adapted to give resonance to the tones. I obtained very few birds at Obydos. There was no scarcity of birds, but they were mostly common Cayenne species.
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