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To produce the loud, open sounds the wing-covers are fully lifted; to produce the muted, muffled notes they are lowered. When lowered their outer edges press more or less lightly on the soft flanks of the insect, thus diminishing the vibratory area and damping the sound.
At the bottom of this devil's purse remains a heap of the dead and dying, of severed limbs and wing-covers torn off; the inevitable sequels of the frantic orgy. Soon the woodlice, earwigs, and ants will appear to prey upon the injured. What are these insects doing?
There are beetles belonging to closely allied species, or even to the same identical species, which have either full-sized and perfect wings, or mere rudiments of membrane, which not rarely lie under wing-covers firmly soldered together; and in these cases it is impossible to doubt, that the rudiments represent wings.
But the four claws hold fast; life, before withdrawing from them, left them rigidly contracted, so that they should support without yielding the struggles and withdrawals to follow. Now the wing-covers and wings emerge. These are four narrow strips, vaguely seamed and furrowed, like strings of rolled tissue-paper. They are barely a quarter of their final length.
On the view of each organic being and each separate organ having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable it is that parts, like the teeth in the embryonic calf or like the shrivelled wings under the soldered wing-covers of some beetles, should thus so frequently bear the plain stamp of inutility!
The male is recognisable by his slightly smaller size. The operation commences. Raising the ends of the wing-covers, the assailant seizes her victim by the extremity of the abdomen, from the dorsal side. She pulls at him furiously, eagerly munching with her mandibles. The victim, who is in the prime of life, does not defend himself, nor turn upon his assailant.
Up in front! You mean for'ard; up for'ard!" "That's right, Uncle, I forgot. Come, we'll show these girls where the motor is," and she led the way to where the machinery was enclosed in a large compartment in the bow, close by hinged wing-covers.
The wing-covers open, and are thrust obliquely aside; the wings spring to their full width, standing up like parallel screens of transparent gauze, forming a pyramidal prominence which dominates the back; the end of the abdomen curls upwards crosier-wise, then falls and unbends itself with a sort of swishing noise, a pouf! pouf! like the sound emitted by the feathers of a strutting turkey-cock.
In Ephippiger vitium, a member of this same family, we have a curious subordinate modification; for the wing-covers are greatly reduced in size, but "the posterior part of the pro-thorax is elevated into a kind of dome over the wing-covers, and which has probably the effect of increasing the sound."
A small head, a fine snout, a costume of ashen grey sprinkled with brown, flattened wing-covers, a dumpy, compact body, with two large black dots on the rear segment such is the summary portrait of my visitor. The middle of May approaches, and with it the van of the invasion. They settle on the flowers, which are not unlike white-winged butterflies.
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