Ill' 



or with two slender spines. Front coxse (in our genera) with a spine on 

 the outside. Wing covers seldom expanded in the middle, often shorter 

 than the abdomen, and in color either green or brown. Shrilling organ 

 of male well developed, the cross vein prominent, the color light brown, 

 with the central portion transparent (except in the genus Conocephalus). 

 The hind legs are usually stout and much thickened at the base as the 

 insects seldom fly, but are active leapers, and very difficult to capture. 



The eggs are deposited within the stems or root leaves of grass, the pith 

 of twigs, or sometimes in the turnip-shaped galls so common on certain 

 species of willow. The ovipositor being thus used as a piercer, has in 

 time developed into a slender and sharp pointed instrument which is but 

 little curved and is frequently of excessive length, in some species being 

 over twice as long as the remainder of the body. 



To this sub-family belong those slender-bodied green grasshoppers, with 

 long, tapering antenmi- which are so common in summer and early au- 

 tumn in damp meadows and prairies and along the margins of streams, 

 ditches and ponds. They are mostly terrestrial in their habits, but one or 

 two of the larger ones ever being found in trees. 



The color of their bodies corresponds closely to that of the stems and 

 leaves of the sedges and grasses among which they dwell, and so protects 

 them from the sight of the few birds which frequent a like locality. Their 

 songs, produced in the same manner as those of their larger cousins, the 

 katydids, are as frequent by day as by night, but are usually soft and low 

 in comparison with those of the former. Their day songs differs from that 

 of the night, and, says Scudder, " It is curious to observe these little crea- 

 tures suddenly changing from the day to the night song at the mere pass- 

 ing of a cloud and returning to the old note when the sky is clear. By 

 imitating the two songs in the daytime the grasshoppers can be made to 

 represent either at will ; at night they have but one note." :: 



Twenty-one species of this sub-family, representing three genera, are 

 known to occur in the state. 



Key to Genera of Conocephalin^e. 



a. Vertex produced forwards into a long sharp cone; 



stridulating organ of male green and opaque . . V. Conocephalus. 

 <ia. Vertex terminating in a rounded tubercle which 

 is hollowed out on the sides ; stridulating organ 

 of male light brown and partly transparent. 



-American Naturalist, II., 1868, 116. 



