ORTHOPTERA. 185 



in caves where found, and, as a rule, prefer the vicinity of streams of water which 

 percolate through the rocks. They are very difficult to capture, since they disappear 

 in the crevices of the rocks on the approach of lights. 



Throughout the Rocky Mountain region and the great interior basin of the West 

 are found several species of large, fierce-looking insects that live under stones and in 

 the loose soil, from which they are frequently turned up by the plough in spring. They 

 are popularly known as sand-crickets, and are supposed to be more or less carnivorous, 

 varying their vegetable diet with insects which they capture during their nocturnal 

 ramblings. They belong to the genus /Stenophelmatus, the members of which are all 

 large and clumsy, and, as a rule, of a dirty yellowish-brown color, more or less marked 

 with black. Stenophelmatus fasciatus is most frequently met with in Idaho and 

 Utah, where it lives under stones and in the sand during the daytime, and creeps 

 about at night. S. oculatus is found in Colorado. Like the mole-crickets, which they 

 approach in habit, they are unable to jump, and are therefore exceptional among the 

 Saltatoria. 



In the same locality with the preceding, and throughout all of that portion of 

 North America, south of the Saskatchewan and west of the Mississippi rivers, are 

 found various species of wingless 

 Locustidae which are known as west- 

 ern crickets. Anabrus simplex, a large, 

 dark-colored species which we figure, 

 is the nomadic cricket of the far West, 

 which has frequently appeared in vast 

 armies and done much injury to the 



FIG. 261. Anabrus simplex, western cricket. 



grain crops and garden truck or the 



earlier settlers. It is confined in its distribution chiefly to the elevated sage wastes 

 and mountain slopes, from which localities it makes occasional visits to the fertile 

 valleys below, marching in solid phalanx like an advancing army, and devouring 

 everything green in its path. 



Although herbivorous by nature, when pressed by hunger these stone-crickets will 

 not refuse animal food. This carnivorous habit is known to the farmers, and is taken 

 advantage of in some portions of the cricket area. Ditches are dug across the line of 

 the marching army, and when the crickets arrive at and attempt to cross one of them, 

 they tumble in and cannot escape. Once in the ditch, they are deprived of food, and, 

 becoming desperate, begin to attack and devour one another. It is claimed that in 

 this manner great numbers perish. 



The female, by means of a strong ovipositor, lays her eggs in the ground. The 

 abdominal appendages of the males are crooked and toothed, and form a strong clasp- 

 ing device resembling a pair of pincers. The males are furnished with a musical 

 apparatus which is situated on the dorsum immediately behind the large saddle-shaped 

 shield which covers the prothorax. The song is a sharp grating, something similar to 

 that produced by drawing the point of a sharpened quill over the rough surface of a 

 coarse file or sandstone. This species is confined to the western slope of the Rocky 

 Mountains, while Anabrus purpurascens, which is of about the same size, is met with 

 on their eastern slope, and extends as far east as the Mississippi river, and far to the 

 north and to the south. It differs from the foregoing species in its much more slender 

 form and lighter color. There are several other species distributed over the central 

 portion of the continent, as a rule confined to the more elevated plateaux. 



