2 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [Jan., 'l2 







An Injurious Grasshopper at Ridgeway, New Jersey 



(Orth.). 



By WM. T. DAVIS, New Brighton, Staten Island. N. Y. 



In the last list of the Insects of New Jersey the grasshopper 

 Dendrotettlx quercus Riley is reported from Bamber, collected 

 by Mr. Daecke, August I7th. This is said to be the only 

 record of the species in the Eastern United States. 



Dcndrotetti.r did damage to the oak trees at Ridgeway, N. 

 J., in 1910. A few were found on August 16, 1910, about a 

 mile west of Lakewood, and last year they were very common 

 on the oaks about Ridgeway and north to where the road to 

 Lakewood crosses Toms River. A single specimen was dis- 

 covered on a post oak at Lakehurst on August 15, 1911, so the 

 known range of the insect is from Bamber to Lakewood, a 

 distance of about twelve miles, and westward for a few miles. 

 The damage has been so great that the many defoliated trees 

 near Ridgeway are noticeable from the windows of a moving 

 train. The gayly colored grasshoppers are more common 

 on the white oaks, though they eat the foliage of scarlet oaks 

 and other members of the red oak group. Some of the scar- 

 let oaks near Ridgeway have been hard pressed by enemies. 

 They support many large woody galls of Callirhytis punctata 

 on their limbs; they have had thousands of eggs of the seven- 

 teen-year cicada laid in their branches, which have caused the 

 ends of many of them to break off and die, and lastly the trees 

 have been defoliated by the grasshoppers. 



Mr. W. DeW. Miller, of the American Museum, and I, 

 counted on the trunks of some trees, as many as forty grass- 

 hoppers, usually slowly making their way up to what re- 

 mained of the foliage, and the excrement of the grasshoppers 

 on the limbs fell with a rain-like patter on to the dry leaves 

 beneath. Some of the grasshoppers were fully winged and 

 others were apterous. Individuals between these two states 

 were not common. We have before noticed this in other Or- 

 thopterous insects. Nature either prepares them for flight or 

 the reverse; there is hardly a half way condition. In addition 



