1916] Breeding Habits of the Orthoptera 119 



The Mantids have a very simple courting. When a male is 

 introduced into a cage with a female during the breeding season 

 he approaches her, raises his thorax, lowers his head and stands 

 in this fixed position for some time. The female apparently 

 pays no attention to him during this performance. After 

 introducing himself in this manner he simply mounts the back 

 of the female and copulation takes place. All the movements 

 which are characteristic of the courting attitude occur before 

 any contact of the antenna or bodies has been established, so 

 that touch and contact-odor seem to be secondary. There are 

 no records of one male attempting to seize another, otherwise it 

 might be contended that the sense of sight merely guided the 

 two animals together and that the actual discrimination 

 depended upon contact. Since discrimination is accomplished 

 before any contact has been established, it seems that the most 

 important factor is sight. 



The Phasmids of which the walking sticks are common 

 representatives, have very simple preliminary movements. 

 They are mostly nocturnal in their habits and copulation takes 

 place at night or in very dim light. No contact seems to be 

 necessary and if sight furnishes the male with any information 

 concerning the sex of his mate there is no excitement to indicate 

 the fact. Without any preliminary movements whatever, the 

 male mounts and copulates. Stockard ('08) describes some 

 interesting experiments in which he proves that no complex 

 combination of the senses are required for accomplishing sex 

 discrimination. He cut off the end of the female's abdomen and 

 fixed it to a stick which had been furnished with wire legs and 

 it was found that the male copulated with this piece of abdomen 

 quite as readily as with the normal female. Stockard also main- 

 tains that the experiment proves that no response on the part 

 of the female is necessary to induce the male to copulate. 



The Acrididae or short-horned grasshoppers include a great 

 number of genera and species which show a wide variation in 

 their structure and a lesser degree of variation in their behaviour. 

 A more or less constant type of behaviour preliminary to cop- 

 ulation, however, makes it appear that sex discrimination is 

 accomplished in the same manner for the entire group. One 

 factor in the ordinary behaviour of the Acridid^ which may be 

 of some significance for mating seems to have been entirely 

 disregarded. Most of the insects have organs for the reception 



