SUBFAMILY III. LOCUSTIX.10. 365 



and Monterey, Va. (Fo.i-), west and north to Minnesota, South 

 Dakota and eastern Nebraska and southwest through Kentucky to 

 Clarksville, Tenn., Mississippi and Arkansas. McNeill records it 

 as rare in northwestern Illinois but more common in the central 

 part of the State; Allen as "abundant in grassy groves in Iowa," 

 and Somes (1914, 79) as uncommon in Minnesota, stating that 

 there: "It prefers thickets of elder undergrown with blackberry. 

 From one such spot I took twelve of these pretty little insects in 

 less than half an hour." At Magazine Mountain, Ark., Morse 

 (1907, 48) found it in "a cool damp thicket at a height of 2,400 

 feet where it was not uncommon but very alert and secretive, 

 seldom showing itself and quick to leap away." The Pezotettix 

 ininntipeniiis Thos. (1876, 66) is a synonym. 



160. MELANOPLUS VIRIDIPES Scudder, 1897b, 13. Green-legged Locust. 



Rather slender, subcompressed; size medium. Males, brownish-fus- 

 cous above, dull yellow beneath, occiput darker. Side of head behind the 

 lower half of eye with a broad shining black stripe, this extending back- 

 ward the full length of upper half of lateral lobe of pronotum and bor- 

 dered below by ivory white or yellowish. Disk of pronotum and tegmina 

 wood brown. Fore and middle femora and all the tibia? greenish; the 

 hind tibiae with a black basal ring followed by a pale one. Metapleurae. 

 hind knees, hind margins of three or four ventral segments and often both 

 apical and hind margins of the last two, shining black or fuscous. Fe- 

 males duller, the black postocular stripe not extending downward on cheek 

 as in male, and backward only to metazona, the dorsal surface and sides 

 of abdomen more strongly fuscous, the dark bars of hind femora less dis- 

 tinct. Vertex moderately swollen, scarcely elevated above the pronotum, 

 the portion between the eyes half as broad again, male, or twice as broad, 

 female, as basal joint of antennae. Fastigium rather strongly cleclivent, 

 distinctly sulcate, male, more widely and shallowly so, female. Frontal 

 costa feebly narrowed above the antennae, shallowly sulcate in the region 

 of the ocellus, male, almost flat, female. Pronotum with disk feebly ex- 

 panding on metazona; prozona about half as long again as the densely 

 punctate metazona, its median carina low, often in part subobsolete. Teg- 

 mina equalling, female, or slightly longer, male than pronotum, elliptical, 

 their tips rounded. Supra-anal plate triangular, its apex acute-angled, 

 median sulcus broad, shallow, interrupted at middle; furcula consisting of 

 a pair of minute, widely separated, triangular lobes, lying outside the 

 bases of the median ridges. Cerci extremely variable in shape, their typi 

 cal form being long (nearly three times as long as broad at base), taper- 

 ing gradually from base to middle; the apical half or more slender, sub- 

 equal, feebly decurved, the tip rounded on dorsal side only, its outer face 

 concave and ventral angle slightly produced (PI. Ill, c.) Apex of sub- 

 genital plate feebly prolonged upward into a small conical tubercle. Length 

 of body, $, 1618, 9, 21.523; of antennae, $, 9.5, 9, 8.59; of prono- 

 tum, $,5, $, 6; of tegmina, $ and 9, 56; of hind femora, $, 8.59.5, 

 9, 11.512 mm. (Fig. 126.) 



