It was not until October 1902 that I went back, two months after the swifts had gone; but I was well occupied for two or three weeks during this latest visit in observing the ways of a grasshopper.
There has already been much about insects in { 177} this book, and it may seem that I am giving a disproportionate amount of space to these negligible atomies; nevertheless I should not like to conclude this chapter without adding an account of yet another species, one indeed worthy to rank among the Insect Notables of Southern England described in a former chapter. The account comes best in this place, since the species had seemed rare, or nowhere abundant, until, in October, I found it most common in Selborne parish; and here I came to know it well, as I had come to know its great green relation, _Locusta viridissima_, at Longparish. Both are of one family, and are night singers, but the Selborne insect belongs to a different genus--_Thamnotrizon_--of which it is the only British representative; and in colour and habits it differs widely from the green grasshoppers. The members of this charming family are found in all warm and temperate countries throughout the world: in this island we may say that they are at the extreme northern limit of their range. Of our nine British species only three are found north of the Thames. _Thamnotrizon cinereus_ is one of these, but is mainly a southern species, and the latest of our grasshoppers to come to maturity. In September it is full grown, and may be heard until November. It is much smaller than _viridissima_, and is very dark in colour, the female, which has no vestige of wings, being of a uniform deep olive-brown, except the under surface, which is bright buttercup-yellow. The male, though smaller than the female, and like her in colour, has a more { 178} distinguished appearance on account of his small aborted wings, which serve as an instrument of music, and form a disc of ashy grey colour on his black and brown body.
Unless looked at closely this insect appears black, and might very well be called the black grasshopper. And here it is necessary once more to protest against what must be regarded as a gross neglect of a plain duty on the part of writers on our native insects who will not give English names even to the most common and interesting species. Unless it has a vernacular name they will go on speaking of it as _Thamnotrizon cinereus_, _Cordulegaster annulatus_, or whatever it may be, to the end of time. This grasshopper has no common name that I can discover: I have caught and shown it to the country people, asking them to name it, and they informed me that it was a "grasshopper," or else a "cricket." Black, or black and yellow, or autumn grasshopper would do very well: but any English name would be better than the entomologist's ponderous double name compounded out of two dead languages.