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Long-horned Grasshoppers — Part 1

(Family Locustidae.)

These insects, known as the long-horned grasshoppers, or green grasshoppers, comprise those species having very long antennae, longer than the body, having tarsi with four joints instead of three, as with the Acridiidae, and possessing in the female sex a long saw-shaped ovipositor which is composed of six pieces instead of four, as with the Acridiidae. They are delicate insects, much more fragile than the short-horned grasshoppers, and are great singers. The males are usually provided with a musical apparatus consisting of a curious development of the veins and membrane at the base of the wing cover. A curved ovipositor permits many forms to insert their eggs into pithy plants or into the earth. Nearly all of the species are strict vegetable feeders although some of them are said to be carnivorous. The commoner forms have been called the meadow grasshoppers. They are the long, slender, delicate species found on grass and low-growing plants. A common representative of this group is Orchelimum vulgare. Others are known as the katydids from the resemblance of the male call to the word "katydid," while others somewhat resemble crickets and are found under stones and rubbish in the woods and in caves. The so-called western crickets (Anabrus purpurascens and A. simplex) belong to this group, as also do the ferocious looking creatures of the genus Stenopelmatus, found in the arid regions of the West and which are erroneously considered as poisonous.

The long-horned grasshoppers, or green grasshoppers, are among the most musical of our orthopterous insects. Everyone knows the call of the katydid, and everyone knows Holmes' beautiful poem about this interesting creature. Our commonest katydids ordinarily call "Katy," or say "She did," rather than "Katy did." That is to say, they rasp their fore wings twice oftener than three times. "These two notes," says Scudder, "are of equal (and extraordinary) emphasis, the latter about one-quarter longer than the former; or, if three notes are given, the first and second are alike, and a little shorter than the last. The notes are repeated at the rate of two hundred per minute, and, while the interval between two series of notes varies to a certain degree, it is seldom greater than two and one-third seconds or less than a second and a quarter." This is Mr. Scudder's attempt to reduce this note to a scale:

It is a noticeable thing with these insects that the day note differs from the night note, and, unlike the katydids, one of the long-horned grasshoppers, known as Scudderia curvicauda, is noisier by night than by day. The day tune is played only in the sunshine, and the night tune after dark or in cloudy weather. Scudder was once watching one of these little creatures in the sunshine. "As a cloud passed over the sun he suddenly changed his note to one with which I was already familiar but without knowing to what insect it belonged. At the same time all the individuals around, whose similar day song I had heard, began to respond with the night cry. The cloud passed away, and the original note was resumed on all sides. The day song is reduced to scale by Scudder as follows:

Typical Life History of a Katydid

(Microcentrum retinervis Say.)