Our black grasshopper lives in grass and herbage, in the shade of bushes and trees, and so long as the weather is hot it is hard to find him, as he keeps in the shade. He is furthermore the shyest and wariest of his family, and ready to vanish on the least alarm. He does not leap, but slips away into hiding; and if one goes too near, or attempts to take him, he suddenly vanishes. He simply drops down through the leaves to the earth, and sits close and motionless at the roots on the dark mould, and unless touched will not move. When traced down to his hiding-place he leaps away, and again sits motionless, where, owing to his dark colour on the dark soil, he is invisible. Later, when the weather grows cool, he comes out and sits on a leaf, basking by the hour in the sun, his eyes turned from it; and it is then easy to find him, the dark colour making him appear very conspicuous on a green leaf. Occasionally he sings in the afternoon, but, as a rule, he begins at dusk, and continues for some hours. To sing, the males often go high up in the bushes, and when emitting their sound are almost constantly on the move.
The sound is a cricket-like chirp; it is never sustained, but in quality it resembles the subtle musical shrilling of the viridissima, although it does not carry half so far.
In disposition the two species, the black and great green grasshoppers, are very unlike. The female viridissima, we have seen, is the most indolent and placid creature imaginable, while the males are perpetually challenging and fighting one another. The males of the black grasshopper I could never detect fighting. It is not easy to observe them, as they sing mostly at night; and as a rule when singing they are well hidden by the leaves. But I have occasionally found two males singing together, apparently against each other, when I would watch them, and although as they moved about they constantly passed and repassed so close that they all but touched, they never struck at each other, nor put themselves into fighting attitudes. One day I found two males sitting on a leaf together, side by side, like the best of friends, basking in the sun.
The female, on the other hand, is a most unpleasant creature, so restless that in confinement she spends the whole time in running about in her cage or box, incessantly trying to get out, examining everything, eating of everything given her, and persecuting any other insect placed with her. When I put males and females together the poor males were kicked and bitten until they died.
Before visiting Selborne in October, it had seemed to me that hunting for this grasshopper was a most fascinating pursuit. It was very hard to find him by day, and when by chance you caught sight of him, sitting on a green leaf in the sun and looking like a small, very dark-coloured frog with abnormally long hind legs, it was generally in a bramble bush, into which he would vanish when approached too near.
When at Selborne, one evening I heard one singing among the herbage at the foot of the Hanger, and next morning I found one at the same spot—a female, sitting on a gold-red fallen beech leaf, her blackness on the brilliant leaf making her very conspicuous. A little later, when the wet weather improved, I found the grasshopper all about the village, and even in it; but it was most abundant near the Well Head and in the hedges between Selborne and Nore Hill. Here on a sunny morning I could find a score or more of them, and at dark they could be heard in numbers chirping in all the hedges.
CHAPTER IX
The Selborne atmosphere—Unhealthy faces—Selborne Common—Character of scenery—Wheatham Hill—Hampshire village churches—Gilbert White's strictures—Churches big and little—The peasants' religious feeling—Charm of old village churches—Seeking Priors Dean—Privett church—Blackmoor church—Churchyards—Change in gravestones—Beauty of old gravestones—Red alga on gravestones—Yew trees in churchyards—British dragon-tree—Farringdon village and yew—Crowhurst yew—Hurstbourne Priors yew—How yew trees are injured.