The Life of the Grasshopper

by Jean-Henri Fabre

A brief study of the three other Crickets of my neighbourhood has taught me nothing of any interest. Possessing no fixed abode, no burrow, they wander about from one temporary shelter to another, under the dry grass or in the cracks of the clods. They all carry the same musical instrument as the Field Cricket, with slight variations of detail. Their song is much alike in all cases, allowing for differences of size. The smallest of the family, the Bordeaux Cricket, stridulates outside my door, under the cover of the box borders. He even ventures into the dark corners of the kitchen, but his song is so faint that it takes a very attentive ear [[346]]to hear it and to discover at last where the insect lies hidden.

In our part of the world, we do not have the House Cricket, that denizen of bakers’ shops and rural fireplaces. But, though the crevices under the hearthstones in my village are silent, the summer nights make amends by filling the country-side with a charming symphony unknown in the north. Spring, during its sunniest hours, has the Field Cricket as its musician; the calm summer nights have the Italian Cricket (Œcanthus pellucens, Scop.). One diurnal, the other nocturnal, they share the fine weather between them. By the time that the first has ceased to sing, it is not long before the other begins his serenade.

The Italian Cricket has not the black dress and the clumsy shape characteristic of the family. He is, on the contrary, a slender, fragile insect, quite pale, almost white, as beseems his nocturnal habits. You are afraid of crushing him, if you merely take him in your fingers. He leads an aerial existence on shrubs of every kind, or on the taller grasses; and he rarely descends to earth. His song, the sweet music of the still, hot evenings from July to October, begins at [[347]]sunset and continues for the best part of the night.

This song is known to everybody here, for the smallest clump of bushes has its orchestra. It is heard even in the granaries, into which the insect sometimes strays, attracted by the fodder. But the pale Cricket’s ways are so mysterious that nobody knows exactly the source of the serenade, which is very erroneously ascribed to the Common Black Cricket, who at this period is quite young and silent.

The song is a soft, slow gri-i-i, gri-i-i, which is rendered more expressive by a slight tremolo. On hearing it, we divine both the extreme delicacy and the size of the vibrating membranes. If nothing happen to disturb the insect, settled in the lower leaves, the sound remains unaltered; but, at the least noise, the executant becomes a ventriloquist. You heard him here, quite close, in front of you; and now, all of a sudden, you hear him over there, fifteen yards away, continuing his ditty softened by distance.

You move across. Nothing. The sound comes from the original place. No, it doesn’t, after all. This time, it is coming from over there, on the left, or rather from [[348]]the right; or is it from behind? We are absolutely at a loss, quite unable to guide ourselves by the ear towards the spot where the insect is chirping.

It needs a fine stock of patience and the most minute precautions to capture the singer by the light of a lantern. The few specimens caught under these conditions and caged have supplied me with the little that I know about the musician who is so clever at baffling our ears.

The wing-cases are both formed of a broad, dry, diaphanous membrane, fine as a white onion-skin and capable of vibrating throughout its whole area. They are shaped like a segment of a circle thinning towards the upper end. This segment folds back at right angles along a prominent longitudinal vein and forms a flap which encloses the insect’s side when at rest.

The right wing-case lies above the left. Its inner edge bears underneath, near the root, a knob which is the starting-point of five radiating veins, of which two run upwards, two downwards and the fifth almost transversely. The last-named, which is slightly reddish, is the main part, in short the bow, as is shown by the fine notches cut [[349]]across it. The rest of the wing-case presents a few other veins of minor importance, which keep the membrane taut without forming part of the friction-apparatus.

The left or lower wing-case is similarly constructed, with this difference that the bow, the knob and the veins radiating from it now occupy the upper surface. We find, moreover, that the two bows, the right and the left, cross each other obliquely.