Feb., '04] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 6l 



forced to look elsewhere. A garden weed yielded a very few 

 large lice of a species not previously fed to them, and these 

 were eaten like the others. It was not long however, before I 

 found it impossible to find even these, and I began to despair 

 of ever bringing any of the crickets to maturity. On July 

 2oth I had but three left, and one of these was rather small 

 and unpromising. With their natural food supply exhausted 

 I thought the case nearly hopeless. It then occurred to me 

 that perhaps they might eat insects other than plant-lice, so I 

 captured some specimens of Pieris rapes, snipped off their 

 wings, cut the bodies partly open and placed them in the jars 

 with the crickets. On the following morning I found to my 

 great satisfaction that they had been feasting upon them. 

 Later, house flies were added to their menu, and were fed upon, 

 and this, in one case at least, in the afternoon. On the night 

 of July 24th, the largest one of the three specimens moulted 

 again, and on the morning of the 25th, I found a full-grown 

 female specimen of Occanthus niveus DeGeer in the jar. 



In looking over the literature on the species I had found in 

 one of Prof. C. M. Weed's reports* while Entomologist for 

 Ohio, the statement that OecantJnts niveus is carniverous when 

 young, but " when full-grown, however, the insect becomes a 

 vegetarian." f I had been feeding my adult specimens princi- 

 pally upon a diet of flies, but thinking that possibly a vege- 

 table diet might be preferred, I placed in the jar one night 

 several kinds of young and tender leaves and a single house 

 fly. The leaves were small and were carefully examined, so 

 that had any part of them been eaten I could have easily de- 

 tected it. On the following morning only the wings of the 

 fly remained ; the leaves were untouched. This specimen lived 

 until August 4th, and so far as I could ascertain no vegetable 

 matter was ever eaten though various kinds of leaves were 

 placed in the jar with her. 



*7th Ann. Rept. Ohio Agric. Expt. Station p. 155. 



f It is but fair to Prof. Weed, however, to add that in his " Insects and 

 Insecticides," published soon after this Report, he states that these in- 

 sects "feed upon plant-lice and other insects during their entire exist- 

 ence." 



