FIFTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT 75 



an electric flash-lamp. The glare of the light usually causes the 

 insect to stop its calls, but it remains motionless upon a branch 

 or leaf and may be grasped with a delicate pair of forceps, pro- 

 vided the movements of the collector's arm are performed out- 

 side the rays of light. If the locust has become silent and cannot 

 be detected when the light is thrown upon it, the collector simply 

 switches off the light and remains quiet. In a few minutes the 

 creature continues its song, when its exact location is again de- 

 termined. Working in this manner, the capture of the larger 

 singing insects is a comparatively simple matter to one skilled in 

 detecting such creatures. What the collector looks for is not the 

 insect's body, which in color matches the surrounding vegetation, 

 but the long, waving antennae. These may be immediately de- 

 tected by the trained eye, while the outlines of the leaf-green 

 body are extremely hard to see unless the locust is moving. In 

 this way the night songsters of a big meadow are collected, one 

 by one, and the collector leaves behind him a silent field that a 

 few hours before resounded with the stridulations of the insect 

 chorus. 



"Our search for the elusive Katy-did, the loudest singer of 

 the local locusts, was for a time quite unsuccessful. Judging 

 from the many queries concerning this tree-top songster of the 

 late summer, without this species the collection of singing in- 

 sects would have appeared incomplete. Some specimens were 

 located in high trees, along the roads of Westchester County. 

 In an endeavor to get them a swivel searchlight was mounted on 

 an automobile, but a tree-climbing expedition was found to be 

 much more difficult than stalking in the open meadows, because 

 in the former the swaying of the branches caused the locusts to 

 stop singing before the investigator could get near enough to 

 discover their exact whereabouts. By good fortune we obtained 

 a number of specimens from Sullivan County, where the species 

 was found living in small saplings and easily collected with the 

 flash-lamp. During August and September the Park resounded 

 with the characteristic calls of this species, many specimens of 

 which we liberated. 



"Among the more interesting insects exhibited, were the 

 walking stick, several examples of the big praying mantis, of the 

 tropics, the huge red-winged locust of the South, the Egyptian 

 scarab, the luminous beetle of Central and South America, and a 

 number of broods of silk worms. The life history of the 

 mosquito was demonstrated by a series of tanks, and adjoining 

 these was an exhibit of the natural enemies of these pests. One 

 of the most popular features of the collection was the series of 



