332 Forty-sixth Report on the State Museum 



to be sexual features and by others as seasonal varieties. " In one, 

 the typical form, the head, thorax, and femora are green, and there 

 is a bi-oad green stripe on each wing-cover, extending from the horn to 

 beyond the middle: this often includes two dusky spots on the edge. 

 The second variety differs so much that it was described by Harris as a 

 distinct species under the specific name, infuscata. In this form the 

 ground color is dusky brown. Intergrades occur in which the head and 

 thorax are of a reddish velvety brown. Length of male to end of 

 abdomen, 20 mm. (.8 inch); to tip of wings, 25 mm. (1 inch). Length 

 of female to tip of wings, about 30 mm. (1.4 inch)." (Comstock.) 



Transformation, etc. 



This species has been shown from reliable data to be double-brooded, 

 unlike our common red-legged locust {3Ielanoplus femur-ruhruni), the 

 Rocky Mountain locust {Melanoplus spretus*), the lesser locust, Melan- 

 oplus atlanis, and most of the other Acrididce, of which there is but 

 one brood annually. It is to this fact in its life-history that its not 

 infrequent appearance in winter or early spring may be ascribed. 



The insects received from Columbia county are immature, being in 

 their early stages of larvfe and pupae — the latter distinguishable by 

 their somewhat larger size (over half an inch) and possession of wing- 

 pads or wing sheaths containing the future wings. They are from the 

 egg-pods that were deposited in holes made in the ground by the ovi- 

 positor of the females last autumn. The larvae hatching from the eggs 

 two or three weeks thereafter, fed for awhile, until they had attained the 

 size that they now present, when the coming of cold weather drove 

 them to shelter for the winter in rubbish, beneath leaves, and in stone 

 walls. Here they remained in an inactive, lethargic state, until unusu- 

 ally warm weather toward the last of March awakened them from their 

 sleep and enticed them abroad. 



The insect becomes fully matured, and takes its place among the 

 earliest harbingers of spring, ordinarily toward the latter part of May. 

 It has been seen by Mr, McNeil for the first, on the 2 2d of April, and 

 he has pleasantly written of it : " This species is the first of its order 

 to reach maturity in the early spring, and the noise of the male [it has 

 remarkable stridulating powers] is the beginning of the grasshopper 

 chorus which continues for six months to come." 



Its Early Appearance Should not Excite Alarm. 

 Occurrences of this kind — the premature appearance of an insect 

 associated in most minds with the warmth and heat and abundant vege- 



* Caloptenus spretus of the earlier New York Reports. 



