2-1:0 FAMILY VI. ACRIDIDJE. THE LOCUSTS. 



are much more wild and active, taking to flight when a person is 

 a dozen yards distant. They use the wings only in escaping, flying 

 swiftly and noiselessly for 50 to 100 feet and alighting on the 

 stems of the tall grasses and sedges among which they have their 

 homes. The only way in which I have been able to effect their 

 capture was by running after them and swooping them with the 

 net as they arose or before they had time to arrange their legs 

 for the upward impetus at the beginning of a new flight. The fe- 

 males are more bulky and lubberly than the males, and are usually 

 seen in more open places, where the grass is shorter, and hence are 

 more easily taken. The earliest date at which mature specimens 

 have been seen was July 13th, in Fulton County, and the latest, 

 October 25th, near Bass Lake, Starke County, though they may 

 occur both before and after these dates. 



The records show that .!/. Ihirfitii* occurs in suitable habitats 

 over the greater part of New England and ranges from Nova 

 Scotia north and west to Nipigon, Ontario, Red River, Manitoba, 

 Minnesota and eastern Nebraska, and south to southern New Jer- 

 sey and central Indiana, though Scudder gives its distribution as 

 "Northern United States east of the Rocky Mountains." It is 

 known from Isle Royale and Dickinson Co., Michigan, and ap- 

 pears to have been taken at only two or three localities in the 

 northern third of Illinois and Iowa. Somes (1914, 27) found it 

 in numbers in all stages near Lake of the Woods, Minn., in July, 

 and says that the "young are uniformly much darker than the 

 adults, some being nearly black, and save for the peculiarly trim 

 pronotum do not suggest the species." 



104. MKCOSTETHTJS GRACILIS (Scudder), 18G2, 463. Graceful Sedge Locust. 

 Shorter and proportionally stouter than Uneatus. General color pale 

 brown, the yellow markings of head and thorax less distinct; tegmina uni- 

 form brown; wings as in Hneatns ; hind femora reddish-brown, coral-red 

 beneath and often within, knees fuscous; hind tibiae dull yellow, with a 

 pale ring near base. Vertex narrower, more pointed, its apex subacute, 

 male, obtusely rounded, female, foveolse longer, narrower, much less dis- 

 tinct; frontal costa more shallowly sulcate below the ocellus. Pronotum 

 shorter, its disk less rugose, lateral carinse more divergent on metazona. 

 Tegmina shorter, broader, often not reaching tip of abdomen in female; 

 teeth of intercalary vein of male very numerous, as high as wide, acutely 

 pointed. Hind femora reaching tip of abdomen, male, middle of oviposi- 

 tor, female. Length of body, $, 1923, 9, 2633; of antennae, $, 9 10, 

 9, 8.59.5; of tegmina, $, 16.521, 9, 1723.5; of hind femora, $, 

 1214, 9 , 14.516 mm. 



Greylock Mountain, Adams, Mass., Aug. 17 (Morse}. The 

 range of yntcilis is about the same as that of M. Uneatus but in 



