38 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



male, and that immediately afterward all were extremely 

 anxious, as their behavior clearly showed, to win favor 

 of the second. 



On Aug. 23, two males taken at random were jolaced 

 with a gray female. They both fonght for her pos- 

 session ; after half an hour one of them retired and the 

 victor mated with her. Copulation continued until 5 :30 

 the next morning. Within a half hour the pair had sev- 

 ered, and already both males were clinging to the fe- 

 male, one on each side, tightly clasping her prothorax 

 with their spiny legs. Thus they persisted and con- 

 tended until 4 P. M. w^hen she fell from their grasp — 

 dead — a victim of too ardent wooing. 



On another similar occasion when a female was 

 placed with five males, four of these were simultan- 

 eously clinging to her at the same time, the whole affair 

 forming one struggling mass of life. Throughout even 

 this she succeeded in maintaining her position, clinging 

 to a twig. 



A copulating pair fell from the ceiling of the lab- 

 oratory upon the back of my neck. I brushed them 

 hastily to the floor, and this caused their separation. 

 The female ran swiftly away, pursued by the male, but 

 even with the advantage of two feet of distance she was 

 overtaken, mounted and in copulo in less time than it 

 takes to tell. 



On three occasions when two males were placed in 

 one cage, they mounted one another, and spent from 3 

 to 6 hours in the normal attitude of mating, although 

 no attempt was made to actually copulate. 



In the accompanying photograph (PI. IV) we have 

 an attempt to show many individuals displaying various 

 characteristic activities of the animal, in one group. In 

 the background one can indistinctly see a pair in copulo ; 

 a gray female in the characteristic attitude of fight, the 

 wings raised in a quarter circle like those of an angry 

 goose, rests on the top of the twig, and a green female 



