122 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 
The Walking-stick (Spectrum). 
The Watkinc-sticks, as this English name indicates, 
are very fantastically formed. ‘They are straight longi- 
tudinally, like the stem of a pipe, slender, and some of the 
tropical species are more than a foot long. They are the 
largest in proportions of the whole class, and, on account of 
their length, may be considered the whales among insects. 
They somewhat resemble the Soothsayers, but their fore 
lees are not sabre-like, nor adapted for catching insects. 
They are not carnivorous but herbivorous, and are destitute 
of wings; and although they feed on plants, they are not in- 
jurious to vegetation, because they eat principally useless 
weeds and the juices which issue from trees. Their an- 
tenne and legs are very long, and always extended; and as 
their bodies are of a gray or yellowish and brown color, it 
is often difficult to discover them, or to distinguish them 
from the branch'on which they stand, as the insect is often 
motionless, with the legs extended in a straight line resem- 
bling the lateral twigs. 
In my excursions I have never met the Walking-stick 
farther north than Maryland and Virginia, where I have 
seen them in great quantities in the month of September, 
either standing motionless on the twigs of trees or on the 
rails of fences. At my approach they invariably took the 
opposite side of the twig or rail, in order to evade observa- 
tion. The Hon. Prescott Hall, of New York, however, re- 
cently informed me that he has observed them abundantly 
at his summer residence in Newport, Rhode Island. 
The late Thomas Say held the same opinion that I did, 
and believed this animal tobe only indigenous in the South- 
ern States, until he was corrected in this respect by Mr. 
Charles Pickering, of Salem, Massachusetts, who informed 
him that he had obtained one near that city. 
These insects are mostly all exotic, and, according to 
