. British insects : a familiar description of the form, structure, habits, and transformations of insects. -hornedinsect, with rather sprawling legs, and the appearance ofseveral tails. These tails consist of, first, the abdominalappendages usual in the order, and which in this are apair of long tapering bristles; secondly, of the tips ofthe wings, which being larger than the wing-cases, extendbeyond them, when folded, in two long slender points;and thirdly, in the female, of a long ovipositor. The wing-cases are of a peculiar form in the crickets,being flat along the back and suddenly depress
. British insects : a familiar description of the form, structure, habits, and transformations of insects. -hornedinsect, with rather sprawling legs, and the appearance ofseveral tails. These tails consist of, first, the abdominalappendages usual in the order, and which in this are apair of long tapering bristles; secondly, of the tips ofthe wings, which being larger than the wing-cases, extendbeyond them, when folded, in two long slender points;and thirdly, in the female, of a long ovipositor. The wing-cases are of a peculiar form in the crickets,being flat along the back and suddenly depressed at thesides for their whole length, thus covering the sides aseffectually as the shelving tegmina of the otherfamilies. The bodies of the Crickets are flatter or more depressedthan those of the Grasshoppers and Locusts ; the tarsiare three-jointed, slender, and spined, so being fitted forrunning on the ground. In the genus Acheta theovipositor of the female is long, slender, and projecting;in the Mole Cricket it is withdrawn from sight. The mole cricket (fig. 42, and fig. 14, p. 37) differsFig. Outline of Mole Cricket. from the other Crickets most conspicuously in thecurious hand-like front legs (described p. 37); which 118 INSECTS. are used by the insect in forming burrows withinthe earth. Not only do the digging instruments ofthe Cricket, and its mode of proceeding, resemblethose of the little gentleman in black velvet, butthe burrows formed—though not constructed on aprecisely similar ground-plan—consist, like his, ofa neatly finished chamber, approached by windinggalleries, and, like the Mole, the Cricket while mining,raises a ridge of earth by which it may sometimes betracked. Unlike the quadruped, however, the insect isfitted for more than underground life, and though notequal, either in saltatorial or in flying powers to othersof its tribe, is able both to leap and to fly, and ispossessed of perfect organs of vision. The chosen home of these curious creatures
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Keywords: ., bookauthorme, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectinsects
