ACHETA MEMBRANACEA. Luteo-fusca, pronoti annulis duobus nigris, alis
corpore longioribus, tarsis posticis quinque spinosis. (Long. Corp. 2
unc. 3 lin.)
SYN. Gryllus membranaceus, _Drury_, _App. vol._ 2.
HABITAT: Bay of Honduras, Musquito Shore.
Antennæ long, filiform. General colour yellowish brown. Thorax with two
rings, almost black. Wings extending beyond their cases, terminating in
two tails that are folded; each representing a two-edged sword. Abdomen
furnished with two bristles. At the tips of the hinder tibiæ are placed
five spines, one being quite small; the middle ones have four, that are
small; and the fore ones one.
From the information furnished to Mr. Drury by Mr. Smeathman we learn that
the children in Africa are, at the proper season, very busily employed
digging out of the ground the females, when full of eggs, of a species
exactly the size and form of this, on which they make an agreeable repast,
roasting generally the whole animal, but eating only the eggs, which are
contained in a bag, and resemble part of the roe of a large fish, deeming
it very delicate food. These, like the European crickets, make a continual
and noisy chirping all day long; and the open parts of the country are
never without this music, which ceases neither night nor day. Some sing
only in the day, others only in the night, and others again are never
silent. Of those which sing only in the night, one small species, about the
size of the Gryllus Campestris of Linnæus, sallies out of its retreat early
in the evening, making so loud and shrill a chirping that it may he said to
pierce the ear; and, as certainly as it sings within doors, it silences a
whole company. It fills a large room so completely with its note, which is
something like the sound caused by rubbing a tobacco-pipe round the edge of
a wine-glass, that those unaccustomed to it cannot tell how to direct their
search after it. When they are looking for it, the noise will sometimes
cease for half a minute, and begin again, when the searchers will be as
much at a loss as ever. The black people, however, who have perhaps the
most accurate ears in the world, readily find them, and generally without
mercy put an end to their lives and their notes together. Different species
sing their wild notes among the distant banks, and are heard in the rivers
through the mangroves, though those trees often form a thick wood between
the navigable {92}parts of the river and the dry land of a quarter or half
a mile deep. The mountains and the woods also echo with them all the night
long, and the full concert is very distinctly heard on board the ships,
during a calm night, as they lie at their usual anchorages in the bays and
creeks on the sea coasts.