Chapter XXIV.

1. There are two kinds of grasshoppers: some are small. These are the first to appear, the last to perish. Others, which chirp, are large: these appear last, and disappear first. There is another difference between the small and large kind. Those which chirp have a division in the middle of the body: those which do not chirp have none. The large ones, which chirp, are called achetæ; the small are called tettigonia. Such of these as are divided, sing a little.

2. Grasshoppers do not appear where there are no trees, for which reason they are unknown in the open country of Cyrene, but are abundant near the city, and especially among olive trees, for these do not give much shade, and grasshoppers are not produced in the cold, nor in very shady groves. Both the large and small ones have sexual intercourse with their own kind, copulating with each other on their backs. The male inserts his organ into the female, in the same manner as other insects. The female has a divided pudendum. The female individual is the one which receives the male.

3. They deposit their ova in fields, piercing the soil with the organ at the extremity of their body, like the attelabi; for the attelabi also oviposit in the fields, for which reason they are common in Cyrene. They oviposit also in the reeds which are used to support the vines; these they pierce: and so they do in the stems of the scilla. The young ones are washed into the earth, and are common in rainy weather. The maggot, when it is grown in the earth, becomes a tettigometra: these are sweetest before they have ruptured their covering.

4. And when the season arrives for their appearance, about the solstice, they come forth by night, and immediately burst their envelope, and the tettigometra becomes a grasshopper. They immediately become black and hard, acquire their full size, and begin to chirp. In both kinds the males chirp; the others, which do not chirp, are females. When first produced the males are the sweetest: after the sexual intercourse, the females are sweetest, for they contain white ova.

5. If a noise is made as they fly along, they emit a fluid like water, which the agriculturists describe as if they emitted both a liquid and solid excrement, and that they feed on dew; and if any one approaches them with a bent finger, which is gradually straightened, they will remain more quiet than if it is put out straight at once, and will climb up upon the finger; for, from the dimness of their sight, they climb upon it as if it were a moving leaf.