ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 63 



Up to the present time more species of Podisma are known from the old than from 

 the new world ; in the latter they are not known over a continuous territory, but over 

 two large areas, one in the east and one in the west. That in the east is inhabited by 

 only two species, one of which is only known from Ithaca, N.Y., at less than 500" above 

 the sea, while the other, the better and long known Podisma glacialis (Scudd.,) was first 

 found at the timber line in the white mountains of New Hampshire, and has since been 

 obtained at high elevations 2-4500' above the sea, in Maine on Ktaadn and in the country 

 about the Megalloway, in New Hampshire on Kearsarge in Bartlett, in Massachusetts on 

 Greylock in Berkshire county, and in New Yoi-k in the Adirondacks ; while Mr. James 

 Fletcher and I came across it at the edge of the town of Sudbury in Ontario. It will 

 doubtlesss be found also in Quebec if sought in the proper places ; it is not found upon 

 the ground but upon bushes, in the white mountains on the dwarf birch. Bruner also 

 credits it to " British America," but I do not know from what point he received it, and 

 on enquiry I find it was probably a mistake. 



The western area from which Podisma occurs has half a dozen species, which range 

 along the rocky mountains from New Mexico to Alberta ; all of the species ara found on 

 the mountain slopes or in Alpine valleys, and most of them at or above the timber line. 

 A single specifis only is known to inhabit Canada, Podisma Oregonensis (Thorn.,) which 

 has been taken at Fort McLeod in Alberta, and is also known from Montana, Idaho and 

 Oregon. It is highly probable that other and possibly new species will be found in the 

 Canadian Rockies; it is especially likely that Pod. dodgei (Thom.,) one of the commonest 

 alpine orthoptera in Colorado, and known also from Wyoming and Montana, will occur 

 near timber line in Canada. 



A second genus of the section which occurs in Canada is Phoetaliotes, a group 

 founded by me for a single species, the somewhat anomalous insect Phostaliotes Nebrascen- 

 cis (Thom.,) of which Pezotettix megacephcda Thom., Pezotettix autumnalis Dodge, and 

 Caloptenus volucris Dodge, are all synonyms. It has a large, prominent, tumid head, 

 which with a subsellate pronotum gives it a peculiar appearance ; it is strikingly dimor- 

 phic, full-winged and half-winged, which accounts for a part of the synonymy. In Can- 

 ada it has been found only in Alberta at Fort McLecd and in Assiniboia at Medicine 

 Hat, but it ranges from here, skirting the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, to Texas 

 and even to Central Mexico. I have not seen the long- winged form, volucris, from 

 Canada, but it occurs from Mexico to Montana. 



We have left for the last (though in systematic sequence it should have preceded 

 PI oetaliotes) the typicnl, dominant genus Melanoplus, which contains most of the known 

 Canadian species. This genus is so strikingly dominant as to contain more than one-half 

 of the known Melanopli of the world. In the memoir referred to at the outset, I have 

 desciibed in detail no less than 131 species, all from North America and all but a very 

 few found within the limits of the United States ; it finds its principal home in the west, 

 and it is to this genus that the Rocky Mountain Locust and several other minor depre- 

 dators belong. To handle the genus properly I found it advisable to separate it into 

 twenty-eight groups or series, defined mainly in terms of the male abdominal appendages, 

 which here attain a striking and highly diversified development, and to name the groups 

 after the prpdominant or older species contained in it. In that order I will present them 

 also in the present account. Many of these species have before been placed under Pez- 

 otettix (Podisma) when I and others were accustomed, without careful discrimination, to 

 look upon all the short-winged forms as belonging to that genus and the long-winged ones 

 to Melanoplus. As some species are dimorphic, either fully winged or practically unable 

 to fly from the brevity of the alary organs, that custom had its disadvantages, and a 

 careful study of our entire Melanoplan fauna became a great desideratum, which I trust 

 I may be found to have successfully filled in the paper before referred to. 



In the (j'laucipes series, there is a single species, Mel. kennicottil Scudd., a very small 

 full-winged insect, which must be tolerably widespread in Canada, since it has been 

 brought from the Yukon river in Alaska and the Souris river in Assiniboia, and occurs 

 also in Montana. 



