SUBFAMILY VI. OECAXTLIIXJE. 



721 



jTW 



The known range of typical 0. nigricornis is a wide one ex- 

 tending from New England and Ontario west across the continent 

 and southwest to North Carolina, Texas and Arizona. It is not 

 as yet recorded from Georgia or Florida and numerous records 

 under the name of fusciatus are not to be relied upon. It occurs 

 in numbers throughout New England and Walker (1004, 254) 

 records it as "by far the commonest tree cricket in Ontario, and 

 during August and September it abounds on shrubs and tall herbs, 

 especially golden-rod, and is particularly plentiful on low 

 grounds. Partially cleared bush lauds supporting a rank growth 

 of raspberry bushes, golden rod, boneset and other tall herbaceous 

 plants are favorite haunts. It is so common on raspberry bushes 

 that there is little doubt that the female is responsible for much 

 damage to the canes, though I have no proof of this assumption. 

 I have found it in cultivated raspberry bushes in gardens, but it 

 is more partial to wild districts." 



It is now known that 0. nigricornis and its variety qnadripmic- 

 tatns are the tree crickets which do much harm 

 by ovipositing in the tender canes or shoots of 

 various cultivated fruits, as the raspberry, 

 blackberry, grape, plum, peach, etc. ; no less 

 than 321 eggs, by actual count, having been 

 found in a raspberry cane 22 inches in length. 

 So partial is it to the stems of raspberry and 

 blackberry as receptacles for its eggs that in 

 some localities scarcely a cane escapes with- 

 out being more or less damaged. The eggs 

 are laid in autumn, and at first the injury is 

 shown only by a slight roughness of the bark, 

 but afterwards the cane or branch frequent Iv 

 dies above the puncture, or is so much injured 

 as to be broken off by the first high wind. If 

 the injured and broken canes containing the 

 eggs be collected and burned in early spring 

 the number of insects for that season will be 

 materially lessened. 



Fig. 243. Eggs of 



Tree Cricket in rasp- Brunei' (1895, 112) has written of the hab 



berry cane, (a) Cane, 



showing puncture. ITS of OVlpOSltJOll 01 Ilil'CIIS WJtll Which lie CO11- 



(b) Cane split to 



show eggs, (c) Egg fused those of ii if/ricomis in other plants as 



enlarged, (d) Cap of 

 egg enlarged. tollOWS : 



(After Riley.) 



''In addition to cultivated fruits the snowy tree cricket also deposits 

 its eggs in the stems of a large variety of other plants and trees the main 



