Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/65

 ground, while the katydids ordinarily walk on the three basal segments only, carrying the long terminal joint elevated. The basal segments have pads on their under sides that adhere to any smooth surface such as that of a leaf, but the terminal joint bears a pair of claws used when it is necessary to grasp the edge of a support. The katydids are mostly creatures of the night and, though usually plain green in color, many of them have elegant forms. Their attitudes and general comportment suggest much more refinement and a higher breeding than that of the heavy-bodied locusts. Though some members of the katydid family live in the fields and are very grasshopperlike or even cricketlike in form and manners, the characteristic species are seclusive inhabitants of shrubbery or trees. These are the true aristocrats of the Orthoptera.

An insect musician differs in many respects from a human musician, aside from that of being an insect instead of a human being. The insect artists are all instrumentalists; but since the poets and other ignorant people always speak of the "singing" of the crickets and katydids, it will be easier to use the language of the public than to correct it, especially since we have nothing better to offer than the word stridulating, a Latin derivative meaning "to creak." But words do not matter if we explain what we mean by them. It must be understood, therefore, that though we speak of the "songs" of insects, insects do not have true voices in the sense that "voice" is the production of sound by the breath playing on vocal cords. All the musical instruments of insects, it is true, are parts of their bodies; but they are to be likened to fiddles or drums, since, for the