272 



FAMILY VI. ACRIDIM3. THE LOCUSTS. 



wings long, wide, black, with a narrow, yellowish outer border, 

 apex fuscous; hind femora slender, a little shorter than abdomen 

 in both sexes ; valves of ovipositor curved, acute, feebly exserted. 

 Six species of the genus are accredited to the United States, one 

 of which inhabits our territory. 



117. DlSSOSTEIRA CAROLINA 



Black-winged Locust. 



(Linnaeus), 1758, 433. Carolina Locust. 



General color varying from light grayish-yellow through bright red- 

 dish brown to dark fuscous, 

 usually dull ashy-brown, 

 sprinkled with numerous 

 small dusky spots; these 

 most numerous on pronotum 

 and tegmina, on the latter 

 sometir.es forming three 

 more or less distinct cross- 

 bands. Wings deep black ex- 

 cept the outer border, which 

 is pale greenish-yellow, the 

 apex smoky gray with a few 

 darker spots. Hind femora 

 reddish-brown, faintly annu- 

 late with paler near knee and 

 with three broad black bands 

 en inner face, upper outer 

 face indistinctly barred with 

 fuscous. Hind tibiae yellow- 

 ish or dusky. Length of body, 



Fig. 10 1. Dissosteira Carolina (Linn.). 

 (After Lugger.) 



Female. 



$, 2433, 9, 3340; of antennae, $, 9.511, 9, 11.513; of pronotum, 

 $, 7, 9. 10; of tegmina, $ , 2934, 9, 3643; of hind femora, $, 1315 

 9, 1C 20mm. (Pig. 101.) 



The black-winged locust occurs everywhere throughout Indi- 

 ana and to the casual observer appears to be our most common 

 species, but there are a dozen which are more abundant. Its 

 numbers appear multiplied because it frequents the highways and 

 by-ways of man rather than the pastures and meadows where 

 other grasshoppers are wont to congregate. Moreover, when dis- 

 turbed, it more often betakes itself to the bare earth than to the 

 green grass. Why this absurd taste asks the person uninitiated 

 in the doings of nature's objects. For the simple reason that the 

 dust of the roadside and the gravel ballast of the railway corre- 

 spond so closely with the color of its back that its best friends 

 and worst enemies will overlook it if it will only remain quiet. 

 Yea, even that sharp-eyed connoisseur of grasshopper tid-bits, the 



