SUBFAMILY I. GRYLLOTALPINJG. 647 



this recognition of the weather is rather remarkable in a burrowing insect, 

 and the more so as it does not appear to come to the surface to stridulate, 

 but remains in its burrow, usually an inch below the surface of the ground. 

 Its chirp is a gutteral sort of sound, like grii or green, repeated in a trill 

 indefinitely, but seldom for more than two or three minutes, and often for 

 less time. It is pitched at two octaves above middle C, and the notes are 

 usually repeated at the rate of about 130 or 135 per minute; sometimes, 

 when many are singing, as rapidly as 150 per minute. Often, when it first 

 begins to chirp, it gives a single prolonged trill of more slowly repeated 

 notes, when the composite character of the chirp is much more readily de- 

 tected, and afterward is quiet for a long time. When most actively chirp- 

 ing, however, the beginning of a strain is less vigorous than its full swell, 

 and the notes are then repeated at the rate of about 120 per minute; it 

 steadily gains its normal velocity. It sounds not unlike a feeble distant 

 croaking of toads at spawning season." 



McNeill (loc- cit.} says he has "been struck with the resem- 

 blance of the note to that of the tree cricket, Ocean thus niccns. 

 To my ear the only discernible difference is that of pitch. The 

 song is a simple chirp, very low in pitch for an Orthopteron, re- 

 peated at intervals of about a second." 



Baumgartner (loc. cit.) says that the female mole cricket has 

 a partly developed chirping organ on its tegmina. With this it 

 produces a single note used as a means of recognition in the dark 

 tunnels which it inhabits; both this organ of sound and the pro- 

 tective secretion above mentioned being adaptations to an under- 

 ground life. 

 308. GRTLLOTALPA MAJOR Saussure, 1874, 343. Giant Mole Cricket. 



Size very large, form robust. Brownish-yellow; pronotum velvety 

 brown, with a faint narrow median groove or oval space smooth, shining 

 and prolonged backward in several lines. Tegmina abbreviated, reaching 

 only the fourth abdominal segment; wings fully developed, surpassing the 

 abdomen. Front legs stout, the trochanter large and of the same shape as 

 in G. gryllotalpa. Hind femora more slender than in that species; hind 

 tibiae feebly enlarged at middle, armed as described in key. Claws of hind 

 tarsi equal. Length of body, <J, 41; of pronotum 13, of tegmina, 19 mm. 

 Width of pronotum, 10 mm. 



The above are the salient points of the original description, 

 the type of which was from Illinois. The only published record 

 of its occurrence elsewhere, which can be found, is that of 

 Brunei' (1885, 12G) who mentions and briefly describes a speci- 

 men from Labette County, Kansas under the name of Uri/llotalpa 

 jtonrteroxa n. sp.? Caudell (Ms.) reports that he has received 

 specimens from Carthage, Mo., Louisville, Miss, and Oklahoma, 

 and specimens in the Philadelphia collections are from Rile} 7 

 County and Manhattan, Kansas, and Stilhvater, Okla. All stud- 



