TREE CRICKETS OF GARDEN AND ORCHARD.* 



F. H. HALL. 



Undoubtedly many country folk have heard, during 



Insect the sultry nights of late summer, the shrill, musical 



songsters. trills, or " songs," of tree crickets; but probably only 



a limited number of nature students have more than 



wondered who the singers might be. Few persons, indeed, have seen 



many tree crickets and fewer still realize that there are several 



species of these interesting little songsters of the night, that they 



may be both helpful and harmful to fruit-growers, and that they 



have some most interesting structural peculiarities and habits, 



unlike those of any other group of insects. 



Of these crickets there are three species worthy of 



Work of some attention from orchardists and gardeners in 



tree crickets. New York State; but only one that causes serious 



harm directly by its own work. The other two may 



even be quite useful at times, and have usually been placed in the 



category of beneficial insects, as they often feed upon San Jose scale 



and other small insects that are distinct menaces to fruit interests. 



But it is now known that all these species may transport the spores 



of the fungi that cause certain plant diseases, and that they sometimes 



deposit these spores where the resultant fungus growth produces 



cankers and dead areas in bark and wood. 



Tree crickets belong to the group of straight-winged 



What are insects, which includes our common grasshoppers, 



tree crickets? locusts, katydids and black crickets; but they are 



smaller, slenderer insects than any of these, and are 



of a delicate, light yellowish-green color which makes them quite 



inconspicuous among the foliage of the plants on which they live. 



Indeed, during the daytime in bright weather, to see them at all, in 



their five immature stages, it is usually necessary to search very 



carefully for the very long, slender, forward-stretched antennae, 



which the insect extends from within or below some curled leaf or 



Reprint of Popular Edition of Bulletin No. 388 ; for Bulletin see p. 452. 



[946] 



