212 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [June, 



with silvery or yellowish scales, while a post-ocular bar of darker 

 scales frequently extends as a narrow line of dark scales along the 

 dorsal edge of the lateral lobes of the pronotum to its caudal margin. 

 In specimens which have lost their scaly covering no trace of such a 

 line exists, the ground color of head, pronotum, limbs and first two 

 or three segments of the abdomen is found to be russet, while the 

 remainder of the abdomen is black. The maxillary palpi are much 

 suffused with blackish, this is most pronounced in the darkest 

 specimens. The ovipositor is vandyke-brown. 



Specimens from Nebraska show, in individuals which have lost 

 their scaly covering, the same coloration, but when fully clothed with 

 scales their appearance is rather more yellowish, owing to the fact 

 that in these individuals a greater proportion of their scales are more 

 yellowish than in specimens from the arid West. 



Individuals from the Atlantic coast are similar to western specimens 

 in body coloration, but their scale covering is usually composed 

 chiefly of blackish or slate-colored scales, which gives the specimens 

 a dark and somewhat mottled appearance quite different from that 

 of western representatives of the species. This difference in colora- 

 tion is augmented by the fact that while in western individuals the 

 caudal margin of the tegmina is marked with a few faintly darker 

 veins, the Atlantic coast representatives of the species have this 

 margin heavily and strikingly velvety black. 



Distribution. — This species is now known to range from central 

 New Jersey southward on the Atlantic coast to north-central Florida, 

 westward across Texas and southern Arizona as far as the Mojave 

 Desert in California, in the middle west north to the northern 

 boundary of Colorado, and over the entire central and north- 

 eastern portions of Nebraska. 



This distribution is rather surprising owing to the fact that the 

 species is to be found both in the humid regions of the East and the 

 areas of extreme aridity of the Southwest. The vertical range of the 

 species is known to extend from sea level to an elevation of 3,550 feet 

 on the Great Plains, 2,274 feet in the Mojave Desert, and 2,500 feet 

 in Pima County, Arizona. 



Biological Notes. — At Cottonwood, California, 39 this species was 

 common under creosote bush (Covillea), where, among the collected 

 refuse at the base of the bushes, the insects were heard shrilly stridu- 

 lating at dusk and later. The sound produced was an incessant and 



Proc. Acad, Nat. Sci. Phila., 1909, p. 482. 



