306 FAMILY VI. ACRIDID^E. THE LOCUSTS. 



the red markings change to orange-yellow. During their early 

 life they are more gregarious than the young of other species, 50 

 to 75 of them often occurring on a single weed or bunch of grass, 

 whose leaves they wholly devour. They are very slow and clumsy 

 in movement, crawling feebly over the ground when knocked off 

 the plant to which they are clinging. Their natural enemies are 

 few, they being apparently so nauseating that even chickens reject 

 them as food. C. K. Dodge (1877) says that: "At times the insect is 

 injurious on truck farms in the Gulf States, as it destroys 

 all kinds of vegetables, melons, etc., even crawling up into peach 

 and fig trees to devour the fruit. As they cannot fly and leap 

 but short distances, they can be easily destroyed by sweeping into 

 nets or by simply crushing them on the ground by the foot, first 

 jarring them down from the plants on which they are feeding." 



Of the stridulatiou of R. microptera Scudder (1893, 75; 1897d, 

 102) says: "I received two females of this species alive, and kept 

 one of them for some time. She was excessively deliberate in her 

 movements, cleaning her antennas by treading upon one at a time 

 and drawing it from under her feet. Tn the sunshine she stridu- 

 lated by raising her tegmina directly upward against the half- 

 opened wings, making a rough, scratching sound, which was re- 

 peated rather rapidly but variably from two to ten times." He 

 adds that Dr. Shufeldt has recorded the males preceding mating 

 as "keeping up a very audible buzzing racket with their fore wings 

 which they elevated and lowered at a few seconds intervals, show- 

 ing the lower carmine pair each time they did so, with telling 

 effect." 



The known range of R. microptera is principally confined to 

 the Lower Austral zone, extending from Cabarrus Co., N. Car., 

 west to Lookout Mountain, Tenn., and south and southwest 

 throughout the mainland of Florida, Georgia and probably Ala- 

 bama and Mississippi, to New Orleans, La, Adults of the black 

 form in a rci are known only from the region north of Florida. As 

 already noted, it has been mentioned or recorded under many syn- 

 onymous names, chief among which are Dictyopliorus reticula- 

 tus Thunb., D. guttatus Stoll and D. marci Serv., the latter being 

 the melanistic form above described. The Rhomalea gloveri Kir- 

 by (1910, 370) and the R. ccnturio of Thos. (1873, 179) nee Drury, 

 are also to be referred to R. microptera. Tn fact, all records of 

 very large, short-winged locusts from the southern United States 

 east of the Mississippi are to be referred to R. microptera, the 

 western lubberly locust, BracJiystola macjna (Gir.), not occurring 

 east of that stream, while the Chromacris colorata Serv. (1839, 



