360 REPORT OF STATE GEOLOGIST. 



3G mm.; of posterior femora, 22 mm.; of ovipositor, 14 mm. Width 

 of tegmina, 16 mm. 



The broad-winged katydid is found in considerable numbers 

 throughout the State, but is much more commonly heard than seen, 

 as it dwells in small colonies in the densest foliage which it can find, 

 such as the tops of shade trees and the entwining vines of the grape 

 arbor. It is more domestic in its habits than any other species of 

 the "katydid" group, frequenting, for the most part, the shrubbery 

 of yards and orchards and the trees along fence rows, being seldom, 

 if ever, heard in extensive wooded tracts. Its note is the loudest 

 made by any member of the family, the male having the musical 

 organ larger and better developed than in any other. The call is 

 almost always begun soon after dusk with a single note uttered at 

 intervals of about five seconds for a half dozen or more times. This 

 preliminary note gives the listener the impression that the musician 

 is tuning his instrument, preparatory to the well-known double call 

 which is soon begun and kept up almost continuously from dark till 

 dawn. Occasionally, in warm cloudy weather, this call is made by 

 day; and if the musician is located he will sometimes be found resting 

 on the topmost leaf of a shrub; swinging to and fro as the breezes 

 blow, and sounding his cymbals in seeming imison with the move- 

 ment. This katydid probably reaches maturity in southern Indiana 

 by mid-July. The song has been heard in Putnam County as early 

 as July 22d, and a single female was captured in Laporte County 

 as late as October loth. 



In a Putnam County farmyard I listened for hours, one August 

 night, to the serenade of a band of katydids. They seemingly tried 

 to outdo themselves for my benefit. But to them 1 was a nonentity 

 — an unknown being. No thought of me or of my attentive ear 

 lurked in or passed through their brains, as they clashed their cym- 

 bals in every shrub and tree around the old farm house. One idea 

 alone possessed the minds of the male musicians. That idea was 

 love — passion — "that greatest thing in the universe." Long and 

 loud the cymbals sounded, each shuffie, each note, doubtless accom- 

 panied by the wish that the next would call from the skies, from the 

 branches above or about them — from anywhere, it mattered not — 

 one of their form and kind. One to whom they could "whisper sweet 

 nothings" — one whom they could caress tenderly with long antenna* 

 — one whom, in time, they could clasp lovingly with their slender 

 limbs and forget cymbals, calls, skies, food, earth, everything in' that 

 long embrace which to them is the acme, the one, the highest object 

 of their mature existence. 



