The Insect Folk Part 23

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See how they are ribbed.

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Now look at this cricket Mabel has caught. It is a female, and its wings, you see, are not ornamented like those of the male.

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Do you know the meaning of his heavily ribbed wing covers?

Why, his wing covers are his musical instruments. See one of them magnified.

It is divided into s.p.a.ces like so many little drum-heads. The ridge that runs across the top of the wing is something like a file in structure.

When little Mr. Cricket is in the mood for chirping, he raises his wing covers and rubs them together.

This throws the stiff membranes of which the wing covers are made into vibration, and the result is the cheery call of our little black fairy.

Little Nell says the cricket is more like a brownie than a fairy, and maybe she is right.

You can easily see the crickets rub their wings together if you watch in the fall of the year.

John says, Why do you have to watch in the fall of the year?

Now who can guess?

Yes, May, it is because the crickets are then full-grown, and have large wing covers. At first, in the early summer, they have no wings, and so of course, we could not see them chirp.

The whole gra.s.shopper tribe is a vocal one; the males all have musical instruments, and in j.a.pan, the people are so fond of the song of _their_ gra.s.shopper folk, which are not quite like ours, that they make tiny cages for them.

The chirpers are caught and put in these cages, and sold in the city streets.

Yes, little Nell, the crickets make mola.s.ses. So do the katydids.

All these little hopping neighbors of ours seem to understand the useful art of mola.s.ses making.

The mole crickets are different from the others.

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They burrow in the ground like a mole, and we do not often see them.

The strangest thing about them is their hands.

No, of course they are not really hands, but they look like them.

All the joints of the fore legs are modified to form strong digging tools, and they look very much like the paws of the mole.

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They are troublesome fellows, sometimes, when they eat the tender roots of the vegetables in the garden.

You all have seen the little tree cricket, but you might not recognize it as a cricket, it is such a pale little creature.

Its light green body may often be seen on bushes in the summer-time, and, if you look carefully, the form will tell you what the little one is.

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A LARGE FAMILY

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The crickets, gra.s.shoppers, walking sticks, praying mantes, and c.o.c.kroaches, strange as it may seem, are all near relatives to each other.

They all belong to one large family or order, the ORTHOPTERA.

Or-thop-te-ra, is it not a hard word!

It will not seem so hard when you know what it means.

It comes from two Greek words _orthos_, meaning straight, and _pteron_, meaning a wing.

Straight-wing.

And do you know, it does not mean that the _upper_ wings are straight, but that the under wings are folded down in long straight lines.

Now let us see if we can tell in what ways all of our Orthoptera are alike.

They all have--?

"Four wings"--that is right, little Nell.

What, John? the walking sticks have no wings?

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Not our walking sticks, but yet they belong to a winged family. You remember the tropical walking sticks that have queer leaf-like wings, do you not?

Are the four wings alike?

No, John says, the upper ones are narrow and stiff and serve as wing covers.

The inner ones are broader and more delicate. They fold up when not in use and are used to fly with.