New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 947 



similar shelter, seemingly to secure warning of the approach of any 

 intruder. Only as evening approaches, or on cloudy days, do the 

 tree crickets become active; for they are essentially nocturnal insects, 

 and feed, sing, mate and lay their eggs mainly in the dusk of evening 

 or at night. 



The five immature stages and the adult of one of the tree crickets 

 are shown on Plate XXVIII, and the pictures convey better than can 

 words the general appearance of all the species. There has been con- 

 siderable confusion as regards both the systematic classification of 

 these tree crickets and the economic importance of the differen t forms. 

 The studies made at this Station should aid in fixing permanently the 

 j distinctions between the three species of economic importance in this 

 State. These species differ mainly in small markings on the antennse 

 and in the slight variations in size and in the relative length and width 

 of the wings. Imagine the entire insect tinted a light, yellowish- 

 green, more soft and delicate than that of the luna moth, with the 

 abdomen somewhat darker, and the figures on the plate will give a 

 good picture of the tree crickets. 



The eggs of tree crickets are laid in late summer or 

 Life history of early fall in or partly beneath the bark of woody 

 tree crickets, stems, or in the softer pith at the center of the stem 

 of plants like raspberry, elderberry or grape. The 

 female cricket is provided with a delicate but strong ovipositor, a 

 most ingenious boring implement which the insect forces to a con- 

 siderable depth through bark and soft wood, afterward reaming out 

 the hole until the egg can be passed through the channel to its pro- 

 tected winter home. Not satisfied with depth alone, the mother 

 cricket seals each orifice, either with a pellet of her own excrement 

 deposited for that purpose, or with bark chips which she dislodges, 

 chews up and makes into a ball. The method of sealing with excre- 

 ment seems to be a peculiarity of one species, the snowy tree cricket, 

 and makes this species doubly liable to be a transmitter of plant 

 diseases; since the spores of fungi have been cultivated in the labora- 

 tory from such excrement caps. This species deposits only one egg 

 in a place, on apple frequently selecting a lenticel to lessen the labor 

 of boring out the egg chamber. On trees and bushes with tougher 

 bark the eggs are frequently placed where the bark is thicker and 

 softer, as at the side of buds or small twigs. In raspberry canes the 

 most common place of oviposition is in the fleshy area at the side 

 of the bud in the axil of a leaf, and sometimes an egg may be laid 

 at each side of the bud; but more have never been found in the 

 Station studies. 



A closely allied species, the narrow-winged tree cricket, very similar 

 in structure as well as habits, sometimes places two eggs through one 

 opening, but drills two chambers at a slight angle with each other, 

 places an egg in each and then seals the single opening with a bark 

 pellet. 



